Re: Something is stepping on something

In article <61j175F1svdtbU1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 Paul Russell <prussell@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> Robert Peirce wrote:
> > 
> > Folks, please give me a break.  This stuff is legacy software, written

> > over 30 years ago and changed only enough to ****t it to new machines. 

> > In this case I did make that change and the code works properly
> > 
> > [resume snipped]
> > 
> 
> It wasn't meant to be a criticism, just a suggestion. You should never 
> assume anything about the layout of variables in memory - it can change 
> not only between different machines and different compilers but also 
> between different builds (e.g. if you change compiler switches). Rather 
> than repeatedly "fixing" these problems on an ad hoc basis you could 
> just invest a little time making the code more robust - it would 
> probably be a net win in the long run.

I second both the "it is just a suggestion", and the "still, I repeat 
that suggestion" parts. This does not have to mean staring for hours at 
the source. There are tools that can help here, such as clint 
(<http://sourceforge.net/projects/clint/>)
and/or valgrind 
(<http://valgrind.org/>)
variant. The things these tools re****t might 
even help you solve some "it crashes once in a while", "the results look 
odd once in a while" or "it does not work when I enable compiler 
optimization" issues.

Reinder