Author: Pham Minh Tri
Date: 08:02:26 08/03/01
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On August 02, 2001 at 13:00:27, Miguel A. Ballicora wrote: >I have an idea for debugging that probably was used before but I want some >opinions about it: > >I am thinking about a system to trace what is going in my engine when I see a >weird move during a game. The main problem is that it is extremely difficult >to reproduce the same conditions for search. I have seen once in a while a >very weird move that I cannot reproduce it if I set the position to search. >The obvious reason is because the tables, hash and history bring information >that I lack when I try to reproduce. >Clearing the tables before each move would be (I think) an easy way out. The >engine in this state will be easy to debug but I would be dodging the problem. >In that way I would not see problems caused by the tables. I would be debugging >probably only part of the engine, dodging the most prone to errors!. >Saving the tables is out of the question, I would fill my HD in no time. > >What I think I can do is to save how many nodes I searched in any particular >move. When I ran out of time I keep record of the nodes. >When I try to reproduce the game I set the limit of thinking in "nodes", rather >than "time". I should be able to reach exactly the same situation in the search >in each of the moves of the games. Moreover, I should be able to reproduce the >whole thing with the debug version. Maybe I can store a log with all this >information and after the game let the program chew it and see if the >reproduction is exact. > >I think that debugging is tedious, boring but extremely important to make the >engine play the way we want. Particularly for chess programs where >the bugs are nasty because sometimes the program does not crash, it just plays >worse "sometimes". > >I just came up with this idea this morning, is there anything that I am missing? >suggestions? Is it obvious and everybody already does this? > >Regards, >Miguel >PS: I think that this kind of testing could be done also with pondering! >just limiting the pondering to n = nodes. Good idea. I think it works well in my system. Thanks. However, the problem maybe the time for reproducing. If I need repeat some thing in the 100th move, I have to wait my computer spend many hours to reach that move. So I could re-check 1 or 2 times per day only. I think another way little easier (I use it sometimes) is to use fix depths, both for normal search and pondering. Pham
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