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Re: Experiencing unreproducible internal compiler errors <<whinge>>
- To: oliva at lsd dot ic dot unicamp dot br
- Subject: Re: Experiencing unreproducible internal compiler errors <<whinge>>
- From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz at delorie dot com>
- Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 17:13:17 -0500 (EST)
- CC: mclowry at cs dot adelaide dot edu dot au, zack at wolery dot cumb dot org, gcc-bugs at gcc dot gnu dot org
- References: <Pine.SV4.3.93.1000317112653.22343E-100000@rosemary> <or3dpqs5pb.fsf@garnize.lsd.ic.unicamp.br>
- Reply-to: Eli Zaretskii <eliz at is dot elta dot co dot il>
> The issue is that, if you can't repeat a compiler crash, odds are that
> it's not a bug in the compiler. There's not any source of randomness
> in it that could cause it to crash only sometimes, given the same
> input.
There is one source of randomness: the contents of memory before the
compiler is invoked. If GCC uses some uninitialized memory, it could
well exhibit seemingly-random-crash type of behavior, even for the
same input.
While in my experience such problems are more often than not a result
of faulty hardware (usually memory), IMHO the possibility of a GCC bug
that causes the same pattern cannot be easily dismissed.