Re: Weird irreproducible error

[roberto@... (Roberto Ierusalimschy)]

> I'm using the stock intepreter, and the only
> metamethods are from strict.lua. I'm afraid posting a
> short section of the script wouldn't help, as it is
> doing nothing in any way unusual.
> 
> Would it be relatively easy for me to modify the
> interpreter's memory allocation usage? This symptom
> looks like one that might be caused by an
> uninitialized area of memory. Perhaps I could zero out
> all the allocated memory at the point of allocation
> and see if that eliminates the symptom.

Of course all software has bugs, but Lua is remarkably stable. All
variables in Lua are initialized to nil (on the Lua level); we often
test Lua with memory-tracking tools like Valgrind (on the C level). Are
you sure the bug is not a "regular" bug in your program? Does not your
program access external stuff that may change from run to run (and thus
cause the irreproducible behavior)?

What platform are you using? Did you compile Lua yourself? How? Do you
use C code?

-- Roberto