From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [IPv6:2600:3c01:e000:146::1]) by inbox.vuxu.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B195822216 for ; Wed, 22 May 2024 15:44:28 +0200 (CEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CB1AA43B29; Wed, 22 May 2024 23:44:23 +1000 (AEST) Received: from freefriends.org (frenzy.freefriends.org [198.99.81.75]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id CFDD943B27 for ; Wed, 22 May 2024 23:44:19 +1000 (AEST) X-Envelope-From: arnold@skeeve.com Received: from freefriends.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by freefriends.org (8.16.1/8.16.1) with ESMTPS id 44MDiFtK326165 (version=TLSv1.3 cipher=TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 bits=256 verify=NOT); Wed, 22 May 2024 07:44:15 -0600 Received: (from arnold@localhost) by freefriends.org (8.16.1/8.14.7/Submit) id 44MDiEGJ326164; Wed, 22 May 2024 07:44:14 -0600 From: arnold@skeeve.com Message-Id: <202405221344.44MDiEGJ326164@freefriends.org> X-Authentication-Warning: frenzy.freefriends.org: arnold set sender to arnold@skeeve.com using -f Date: Wed, 22 May 2024 07:44:14 -0600 To: tuhs@tuhs.org, ralph@inputplus.co.uk References: <502a5f3c-6bd3-4fe8-993c-5351c07e33cd@case.edu> <20240520134155.7A06E1FB2F@orac.inputplus.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <20240520134155.7A06E1FB2F@orac.inputplus.co.uk> User-Agent: Heirloom mailx 12.5 7/5/10 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID-Hash: N3EGULYJJXU6H6MFH6UTJZ5VG5FVLXEQ X-Message-ID-Hash: N3EGULYJJXU6H6MFH6UTJZ5VG5FVLXEQ X-MailFrom: arnold@skeeve.com X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: A fuzzy awk. List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: I've been travelling, so I haven't been able to answer these mails until now. Ralph Corderoy wrote: > I can see an avalanche of errors in an earlier gawk caused problems, but > each time there would have been a first patch of the input which made > a mistake causing the pebble to start rolling. My understanding is that > there was potentially a lot of these and rather than fix them it was > more productive of the limited time to stop patching the input. Then > the code which patched could be deleted, getting rid of the buggy bits > along the way? That's not the case. Gawk didn't try to patch the input. It simply set a flag saying "don't try to run" but kept on parsing anyway, in the hope of finding more errors. That was a bad idea, because the representation of the program being built was then not in the correct state to have more stuff parsed and converted into byte code. Very early on, the first parse error caused an exit. I changed it to keep going to try to be helpful. But when that became a source for essentially specious bug reports and a time sink for me, it became time to go back to exiting on the first problem. HTH, Arnold