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Re: binary search debugging of compilers

From gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu>
Newsgroups comp.compilers
Subject Re: binary search debugging of compilers
Date 2023-05-16 23:52 -0700
Organization Compilers Central
Message-ID <23-05-012@comp.compilers> (permalink)
References <23-05-003@comp.compilers> <23-05-005@comp.compilers> <23-05-006@comp.compilers> <23-05-008@comp.compilers> <23-05-011@comp.compilers>

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On Monday, May 15, 2023 at 6:54:08 PM UTC-7, Kaz Kylheku wrote:

(snip)

> Say we have a basket of apples with a rotten smell emanating from it.
> We can subdivide it, and smell one half and the other. If both halves
> smell, we know we have two or more rotten apples and they ended up
> in different halves. This doesn't matter. We just pick one half and
> keep subdividing.

But the algorithm described, at least as I remember it, doesn't test both
halves.

Sniffing two baskets doesn't take so long, but two tests might.

I was suspecting that there were more efficient ways than doing
both halves, though didn't try to figure out what they might be.

> As long as we stay on the trail of the rotten scent, we will
> get down to one rotten apple, and we can use that apple to analyze further:
> what kind of mould or bacterium has infected it and so on. Probably
> the other rotten apples have the same root cause. If they have different
root
> causes, we can do another search after fixing the one root cause we have
found.

I don't know apple statistics so well.  If you suspect more than one from the
beginning,

As a binary search, it should be 50% probability on each test.
If you see higher than 50% as the tests go on, it might look
suspicious already.

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binary search debugging of compilers Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com> - 2023-05-12 13:59 -0400
  Re: binary search debugging of compilers Kaz Kylheku <864-117-4973@kylheku.com> - 2023-05-13 03:20 +0000
  Re: binary search debugging of compilers Fernando <pronesto@gmail.com> - 2023-05-13 04:47 -0700
    Re: binary search debugging of compilers Kaz Kylheku <864-117-4973@kylheku.com> - 2023-05-14 02:49 +0000
      Re: binary search debugging of compilers gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2023-05-14 13:38 -0700
        Re: binary search debugging of compilers Kaz Kylheku <864-117-4973@kylheku.com> - 2023-05-15 21:52 +0000
          Re: binary search debugging of compilers gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2023-05-16 23:52 -0700
            Re: binary search debugging of compilers Kaz Kylheku <864-117-4973@kylheku.com> - 2023-05-17 18:28 +0000
              Re: binary search debugging of compilers gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2023-05-17 15:23 -0700
                Re: binary search debugging of compilers Kaz Kylheku <864-117-4973@kylheku.com> - 2023-05-19 03:21 +0000
                Re: binary search debugging of compilers Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> - 2023-05-19 21:59 +0000
                Re: binary search debugging of compilers gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2023-05-20 20:20 -0700
                Re: Old C compilers, binary search debugging of compilers Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2023-05-22 09:05 +0200
              binary search debugging of compilers Max B <tekk.nolagi@gmail.com> - 2023-05-19 16:31 -0500
  Re: binary search debugging of compilers Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> - 2023-05-14 19:59 +0000
    Re: binary search debugging of compilers Cameron McInally <cameron.mcinally@nyu.edu> - 2023-05-14 23:28 -0400
    Re: binary search debugging of compilers Kaz Kylheku <864-117-4973@kylheku.com> - 2023-05-15 21:35 +0000

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