Re: Weird irreproducible error

[Steve Heller <steveheller@...>]

--- Roberto Ierusalimschy <roberto@inf.puc-rio.br>
wrote:

> > 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. 

Agreed.

>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? 

I'm pretty certain of that.

>Does not your
> program access external stuff that may change from
> run to run (and thus
> cause the irreproducible behavior)?

No. The input is from a file, which does not change
between runs. Of course, I need to run the program
with different input files in the normal course of
events; however, I'm seeing this problem with the
exact same input for each run.
 
> What platform are you using?

Windows XP.

> Did you compile Lua
> yourself? How? 

Yes, via Visual Studio 2005.

>Do you use C code?

No. I'm using only lua.exe and scripts written in Lua.