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Subject: Re: Help with Release/Debug

Author: James Robertson

Date: 15:08:58 06/13/99

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On June 13, 1999 at 17:33:49, Heiko Mikala wrote:

>On June 13, 1999 at 13:00:35, James Robertson wrote:
>
>>I have not compiled a debug version of my program in a long while, and while I
>>was testing my program yesterday discovered the disturbing fact that, while my
>>debug mode plays 1/2 the speed of the release mode, it plays better.
>>[...]
>>My question is: could someone please provide me with some debug/release theory
>>under MSVC and what the differences are? It might really help me discover where
>>the other two bugs are.
>
>Hi James!
>
>These bugs, which only occur in the release version, but not when you try to
>find them in the debugger are the worst, right? They can drive you mad, really.
>I encountered many of them at work during the last years, but I can only
>emphasize, what Mr. J. Wesley Cleveland said in his answer: The main difference
>between the debug and the release version of a program in VC++ is, that in the
>debug version all unititialized data and arrays are initialized to zero (or
>false, or NULL or whatever it is). So, when you intended to initialize something
>to zero, but forgot to do it, the debugger does it for you, but the release
>version not.
>So, to say it the other way round: whenever a bug disappears using the debugger,
>go searching for unitialized data!
>
>
>Greetings,
>
>Heiko.

That is really good advice! I will try it.

My problems are very strange; release mode *appears* to work normally all the
time. When I ran it with debug mode, it would play better, but every now and
then would crash.

I pinpointed one of the bugs to my 3rd repetition code which deals heavily with
pointers. I have not fixed it yet, but when I disable 3rd repetition detection,
debug mode doesn't crash anymore. However, debug and release are generating
different searches from the same positions, so I have a yet another bug to find
and fix.....

James



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