Re: random debugging, What should I prepare for a PL PhD program

From	gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu>
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Re: random debugging, What should I prepare for a PL PhD program
Date	2022-10-23 00:00 -0700
Organization	Compilers Central
Message-ID	<22-10-052@comp.compilers> (permalink)
References	(3 earlier) <22-10-036@comp.compilers> <22-10-039@comp.compilers> <22-10-040@comp.compilers> <22-10-042@comp.compilers> <22-10-049@comp.compilers>

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On Saturday, October 22, 2022 at 7:51:45 PM UTC-7, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:

(snip)

> Isn't it good practice to maintain a test suite at least for compilers,
> that contains both selected valid and invalid code snippets?

> For error reports on obviously weird input I'd prepare an equally weird
> answer ;-)

The only one I know that actually, really, did that was TeX.
There is a test program that is supposed to execute all code
except for fatal errors.

To do that, you need some type of flow analysis to figure out which
parts of the program are, and especially are not, being executed.
The figure out what to add to the input to execute those that aren't.

I don't think I am quite as good now, but in my early programming days,
I had a tendency to try out features just to try them out, and often enough
find bugs that no-one thought about before.

The only one I can remember now is using ++ in C on a double variable.
There is no rule against using it on floating point types, but it seems that
compiler writers aren't so good at testing it.
[There are certainly code coverage tools that are supposed to let you exercise
all of the code in a program.  Again, not just compilers. -John]

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Thread

What should I prepare for a PL PhD program Tianbo Hao <tianboh@alumni.cmu.edu> - 2022-10-18 14:52 +0800
  RE: What should I prepare for a PL PhD program "Nuno Lopes" <nuno.lopes@tecnico.ulisboa.pt> - 2022-10-19 09:30 +0100
    Re: What should I prepare for a PL PhD program Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2022-10-20 11:30 +0200
      Re: What should I prepare for a PL PhD program Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-10-21 03:37 +0000
        Re: What should I prepare for a PL PhD program Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> - 2022-10-21 21:32 +0000
          Re: random debugging, What should I prepare for a PL PhD program gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2022-10-21 16:56 -0700
            Re: random debugging, What should I prepare for a PL PhD program Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> - 2022-10-22 08:49 +0000
              Re: random debugging, What should I prepare for a PL PhD program Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2022-10-23 01:27 +0200
                Re: random debugging, What should I prepare for a PL PhD program gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2022-10-23 00:00 -0700
                Re: random debugging, What should I prepare for a PL PhD program Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> - 2022-10-23 09:28 +0000
  Re: What should I prepare for a PL PhD program gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2022-10-19 01:33 -0700
  Re: What should I prepare for a PL PhD program anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2022-10-20 07:33 +0000

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