Author: Matthias Gemuh
Date: 10:19:24 07/24/03
Go up one level in this thread
On July 24, 2003 at 09:44:39, Uri Blass wrote: >On July 24, 2003 at 09:23:33, Matthias Gemuh wrote: > >>On July 24, 2003 at 03:09:52, Albert Bertilsson wrote: >> >>>After tracing a bug in Sharper for over a week I was starting to loose hope... >>>A ran 600 games with a debug version, no problem. >>>Switched to release version, after 579 games the bastard hanged =(. >>> >>>Would you consider releasing this engine version bad policy? >>> >>>Have you any known bug in your engine that you simply do not care about because >>>it occurs very rarely? >>> >>>I realize that it will not be easier to find the bug later, it's just that I >>>don't have the stamina to try and reproduce it again with the debug version, it >>>can take thousands of games =( >>> >>>As I write Sharper mainly to let it compete against other engines I have no >>>problem with giving away that one point in a thousand games, but I wouldn't like >>>to see Sharper excluded from tournaments because it's buggy. >>> >>>/Regards Albert >> >> >> >>What is "lost" in a crash is not only a tournament point, but possibly data >>on user's computer. If I read that my engine crashed somewhere, I feel like >>I have stabbed somebody in the back. >> >>I debug "crashes" by comparing updated vs. newly generated hash keys at several >>key points. I also compare lists of moves (in search) generated in 2 different >>ways. > >I had a lot of cases when my program crashed but I never noticed a loss of data >in my computer. > >I often do a small change and test to see if I did not generate a new bug and if >the program crash then it proves that there is a bug that I need to fix. > >Am I lucky not to lose something important in this process? >What is the probability to lose something important like the files of the source >code of my program? > >Uri When Windows crashes and files are open, they may not have correct file lengths, so Windows truncates to what it thinks reasonable after reboot, losing data from even closed files. The open files may not have been opened by your engine. Many users have some utilities running at same time with chess engine (my task list is quite full of such), and these may have open files. Have you never seen Windows truncate files after hanging and reboot? /Matthias.
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