Author: Russell Reagan
Date: 11:00:27 03/31/04
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On March 31, 2004 at 13:23:23, Andrew Wagner wrote: > 1.) No move generator can get through this test without being right. At first thought, this seems like a bad idea to me (assuming it is correct after only 100 test positions). You are testing 100 cases out of some huge number and then assuming that part of your program is correct. If there is a bug in your move generator later on, you will look at everything except your move generator because you assumed that was working correctly. I think that if you used some test suite like this along with many other tests, then you might be able to have confidence in your move generator. This test suite idea sounds like a good way to find major bugs in a move generator. But passing this test suite doesn't really prove a move generator's correctness, and proving correctness is what you are claiming by "no move generator can get through this test without being right." I think you need to do several different tests to be confident that your program is right. You could do a test suite like this, run simple test suites of mate in ones and see if your program solves them all, run lots of perfts and compare with other engines (automate something to run overnight or for a few days), and read over your source code slowly, asking yourself questions like, "what does this line of code REALLY say?" Lots of times I write something, then I narrow down a bug to that line of code, and I realize that what I wrote doesn't do what I intended it to do. It takes a lot of different approaches to be confident about your program's correctness, and even then, it's hard to be 100% sure.
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