Markdown Discuss - Dec 2011 - Help with Error: POSIX collating elements are not supported

Hello,

I hope this is the right place to get help fixing an error when using 
Markdown on our servers.

I'm not sure what our webmasters have done, but a recent change (perhaps to 
PHP?) made our Markdown text disappear from the page because of an error.

PHP Warning:  preg_replace_callback() [<a 
href='function.preg-replace-callback'>function.preg-replace-callback</a>]:
Compilation failed: POSIX collating elements are not supported at offset 116 
in /[PATH]/markdown.php on line 974

Searching for help turned out to be mostly fruitless, except for a page 
pointing to rows 977-981, where one poster says commenting out those lines 
stops the error.

http://forum.theturninggate.net/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1738

That is correct, but it also stops unordered lists from being formatted. 
While we can live with that for now (because Markdown has worked so well so 
far) that won't do in the long run.

There were other pages that mention PRCE, but that seemed to be with a 
different version of PHP (our servers are running 5.2.9 -- and we are not 
able to change that).

We have not found anyone who has the proper skills and is also able to help 
us with this problem.

Has anyone encountered this before and is there a way to fix it?

Thanks,

Doug






_______________________________________________

Douglas Heavrin-Brown
Information and Technology Services (ITS)
University of Michigan
ASB 3028-14
1009 Greene Street
Ann Arbor MI 48104-1432
(734) 647-8181

[This email is either empty or too large to be displayed at this time]

doug said:
>    I hope this is the right place to get help fixing 
>    an error when using Markdown on our servers. 
not really, but there exists no such place, so
this place is probably as good as any other...        :+)

>    Compilation failed: POSIX collating elements 
>    are not supported at offset 116
>    in /[PATH]/markdown.php on line 974 
the error message points to line 974 of "markdown.php".

that is, the error comes from the .php script which does
your markdown conversion for you.   i'm not familiar with
who maintains "markdown.php", but i guess they'll pop in
and help you soon, assuming they're monitoring this list.

it might well be the case, though, that there are _several_
people who've coded php scripts to do convert markdown.

moreover, your script might've been modified by someone
at umichigan, in which case "line 974" might be misleading.

so if you would post your copy of "markdown.php", it will
help people here track down your bug for you, and fix it...
(make sure the license enables you to do a public posting,
but most markdown scripts are of the open-source type.)

it might also help to see examples of an _input_ text-file
which triggers the problem.   (if they all do, just give one.)

-bowerbird
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
<http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/attachments/20111209/69d52d85/attachment.htm>

Le 2011-12-09 ? 16:27, Doug Heavrin-Brown a ?crit :
> Hello,
> 
> I hope this is the right place to get help fixing an error when using
Markdown on our servers.
> 
> I'm not sure what our webmasters have done, but a recent change
(perhaps to PHP?) made our Markdown text  disappear from the page because of an
error.
> 
> PHP Warning:  preg_replace_callback() [<a
href='function.preg-replace-callback'>function.preg-replace-callback</a>]:
Compilation failed: POSIX collating elements are not supported at offset 116 in
/[PATH]/markdown.php on line 974
> 
> Searching for help turned out to be mostly fruitless, except for a page
pointing to rows 977-981, where one poster says commenting out those lines stops
the error.
> 
> http://forum.theturninggate.net/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1738
> 
> That is correct, but it also stops unordered lists from being formatted.
While we can live with that for now (because Markdown has worked so well so far)
that won't do in the long run.
> 
> There were other pages that mention PRCE, but that seemed to be with a
different version of PHP (our servers are running 5.2.9 -- and we are not able
to change that).
> 
> We have not found anyone who has the proper skills and is also able to help
us with this problem.
> 
> Has anyone encountered this before and is there a way to fix it?

I guess it's my fault for not updating PHP Markdown fast enough. Sorry. :-)

I've been made aware of it in September, but I haven't checked it yet.
It might be that a PHP update is causing it, although it seems I would be
getting more emails if that was the case. Perhaps not that many people have
warnings enabled, or perhaps they just silently fill up everyone's server
logs and nobody look at those logs and so nobody tells me.

The warning message could be clearer, but I suspect PCRE is treating specially
character classes in regular expressions that starts with a dot, warning that
POSIX character classes (which starts with a dot) are not implemented. The
solution should be to replace any instance of "[." in any regular
expressions with "[\.".

-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://michelf.com/