6, it wont start otherwise. I left the ; in.

Hmm, I used 7 and my patched client is running fine. Maybe it's enough to garble VACUUM so it doesn't do anything valid.

If you replaced the ; also, you also didn't change the total length of the strings, I think that's what the problem is.

7 x's, one to overwrite all of VACUUM; including the terminating semicolon.

I didn't count the x's in the quoted text that I copied from the thread.

If you overwrite the ; is there not a risk you might cause the next legitimate sqlite operation to fail?

They might get lucky and overwrite the last SQL statement in the method. Seems likely with a statement like VACUUM.