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Subject: a question about the value of checking bounds

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 09:08:08 01/21/03


I finished the time of my evaluation of checking bounds.

It is expensive to buy it and before deciding if to buy it I want to know about
the value of the alternatives.

How many programmers use it?


I talk about it with other programmers(not of chess programs and not in C).

They suggested the following ideas:
1)Not many people buy checking bounds and this is the reason that the price is
so high.
2)checking bounds may be effective to check some work of other programmers but
programmers who work about their program do not need it.


They suggested that it is better if I write functions to do it and replace all
A[i]= with some f(A,i) that will also check for me if i is inside the bounds
that are defined by A.
I said that I think that if I do it then my code will be at least twice slower.

I can also do a special slower code for debug(something that I do not do today)
but I do not like the idea that every time that I add code then I will need to
add also code for debugging.
This may also make me slower in finding specific place that I want to change.

I know that I may have bugs so practically after every small change I do some
checking to see if I get the expected result by telling the program to print
some information but I delete the code after finding that the program prints the
right information.

I am interested to read about the experience of programmers that use checking
bounds.

I have the following questions for them:

1)Did checking bounds help you?
2)Do you usually add code for debugging inspite of having checking bounds?
If 1 and 2 are  positive then question 3

3)Do you decide to use less debugging code thanks to checking bounds?

Uri



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