Re: Experiencing unreproducible internal compiler errors <<whinge>>

["Martin v. Loewis" <martin at loewis dot home dot cs dot tu-berlin dot de>]

> 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.

No, not if you are using Linux, or some other advanced operating
system. The compiler will see zero-initialized memory before it
starts. Only DOS and Irix give you garbage.

> 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.

I can dismiss it very easily. My experience is that when I run gcc
twice in a debugger, every single byte is in the same place in the
second run as it was in the first run. The only source of randomness
could be random input (such as the exact sequence of mouse moves, or
the exact sequence of ethernet packets), but gcc's input is not
random.

Regards,
Martin