The tests/misc/expr test is broken by default in version 8.16.

Looking at the ChangeLog for GNU coreutils 8.19, I found:

2012-04-03  Jim Meyering  <[email protected]>

...

        tests: avoid spurious misc/expr failure on AIX 6.1

        * tests/misc/expr: Avoid spurious failure on AIX 6.1 due to

        differing regexp diagnostic.  Reported by Michael Felt.

If I use the .../tests/misc/expr test script from 8.19, it works fine.

So I've added the 'tests-misc-expr.patch' file to do just that.

---  coreutils-8.16/tests/misc/expr.orig	2012-09-03 07:18:28.214998564 -0700

+++  coreutils-8.16/tests/misc/expr	2012-09-03 07:22:12.547808280 -0700

@@ -140,7 +140,11 @@

      ['bre48', '_ : "a\\{1,x"',

       {ERR => "$prog: Unmatched \\{\n"}, {EXIT => 2}],

      ['bre49', '_ : "a\\{32768\\}"',

-      {ERR => "$prog: Invalid content of \\{\\}\n"}, {EXIT => 2}],

+      {ERR => "$prog: Invalid content of \\{\\}\n"}, {EXIT => 2},

+      # Map AIX-6's different diagnostic to the one we expect:

+      {ERR_SUBST =>

+       's,Regular expression too big,Invalid content of \\\\{\\\\},'},

+      ],

      ['bre50', '_ : "a\\{1,0\\}"',

       {ERR => "$prog: Invalid content of \\{\\}\n"}, {EXIT => 2}],

      ['bre51', '"acabc" : ".*ab\\{0,0\\}c"', {OUT => '2'}],

@@ -171,7 +175,7 @@

     );

 # If using big numbers fails, remove all /^bignum-/ tests

-`expr $big_prod '*' $big_prod '*' $big_prod`

+qx!expr $big_prod '*' $big_prod '*' $big_prod!

   or @Tests = grep {$_->[0] !~ /^bignum-/} @Tests;

 # Append a newline to end of each expected 'OUT' string.