[pkg-ntp-maintainers] Bug#749761: ntp: simplifying extraction of statsdir with sed alone in cron.daily

[J G Miller]

Package: ntp
Version: 1:4.2.6.p5+dfsg-7+deb8u1
Followup-For: Bug #749761


Further to my original report of nearly TWO YEARS AGO, the extractions of
statsdir can be simplified with just the use of sed without the unecessary
and wasteful use of cat or grep, and take account of any leading
whitespace (tabs or spaces), using


       statsdir=$(sed -nr 's|^[[:space:]]*[^#]*statsdir[[:space:]]*||p' /etc/ntp.conf)


If trailing white space should be trimmed (along with any following
text eg an inline comment) and assuming the directory name does not
contain spaces [this is not Windoze], then


       statsdir=$(sed -nr 's|^[[:space:]]*[^#]*statsdir[[:space:]]*([^[:space:]]*).*|\1|p')


The expression successfully retrieves the three uncommented instances of
the statsdir value from a file containing multiple spaces and spaces


#statsdir       no_space_before_hash_and_no_space_after
# statsdir      no_space_before_hash_and_space_after
#  statsdir     no_space_before_hash_and_two_spaces_eafter
#               statsdir        no_space_before_hash_and_two_tabs_eafter
  #statsdir     space_before_hash_and_no_space_after_hash
  # statsdir    space_before_hash_and_space_after_hash
        # statsdir tab_before_hash_and_space_after_hash
        # statsdir      tab_before_hash_and_tab_after_hash

statsdir        specifier_has_no_leading_space_1
    statsdir    specifer_with_leading_space_2
       statsdir    specifer_with_leading_space_3           # This is a comment


Why invoke cat and grep uncessarily when using sed alone will get the job done?


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.3
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: armhf (armv7l)

Kernel: Linux 3.10.17.1-wand-armhf.com (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) (ignored: LC_ALL set to C)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)

Versions of packages ntp depends on:
ii  adduser      3.113+nmu3
ii  dpkg         1.17.26
ii  libc6        2.19-18+deb8u3
ii  libcap2      1:2.24-8
ii  libedit2     3.1-20140620-2
ii  libopts25    1:5.18.4-3
ii  libssl1.0.0  1.0.1k-3+deb8u4
ii  lsb-base     4.1+Debian13+nmu1
ii  netbase      5.3

Versions of packages ntp recommends:
ii  perl  5.20.2-3+deb8u4

Versions of packages ntp suggests:
ii  ntp-doc  1:4.2.6.p5+dfsg-7+deb8u1

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/default/ntp changed [not included]
/etc/ntp.conf changed [not included]

-- no debconf information