From: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
To: Arnold Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com>
Cc: Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu>,
The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] Re: The 'usage: ...' message. (Was: On Bloat...)
Date: Sun, 19 May 2024 21:43:11 -0600 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CANCZdfoQ7EH9mHVK=OY7_86TA1zpwNLAjHJ5V8emo3Q22U3AbQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <202405200319.44K3J2Jq117819@freefriends.org>
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On Sun, May 19, 2024, 9:19 PM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
> Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The Cornell PL/I compiler, PL/C, ran on the IBM 360 so of course used
> batch
> > input. It tried automatically to keep things running after a parsing
> error
> > by inserting some token - semicolon, parenthesis, whatever seemed best -
> > and continuing to parse, in order to maximize the amount of input that
> > could be parsed before giving up. At least, that's what I took the
> > motivation to be. It rarely succeeded in fixing the actual problem,
> despite
> > PL/I being plastered with semicolons, but it did tend to ferret out more
> > errors per run. I found the tactic helpful.
> >
> > -rob
>
> Gawk used to do this, until people started fuzzing it, causing cascading
> errors and eventually core dumps. Now the first syntax error is fatal.
> It got to the point where I added this text to the manual:
>
> In recent years, people have been running "fuzzers" to generate
> invalid awk programs in order to find and report (so-called)
> bugs in gawk.
>
> In general, such reports are not of much practical use. The
> programs they create are not realistic and the bugs found are
> generally from some kind of memory corruption that is fatal
> anyway.
>
> So, if you want to run a fuzzer against gawk and report the
> results, you may do so, but be aware that such reports don’t
> carry the same weight as reports of real bugs do.
>
> (Yeah, I've just changed the subject, feel free to stay on topic. :-)
>
Awk bailing out near line 1.
Warner
> Arnold
>
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2024-05-20 3:43 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 19+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2024-05-19 23:08 [TUHS] " Douglas McIlroy
2024-05-20 0:58 ` [TUHS] " Rob Pike
2024-05-20 3:19 ` arnold
2024-05-20 3:43 ` Warner Losh [this message]
2024-05-20 4:46 ` arnold
2024-05-20 9:20 ` [TUHS] A fuzzy awk. (Was: The 'usage: ...' message.) Ralph Corderoy
2024-05-20 11:58 ` [TUHS] " arnold
2024-05-20 13:10 ` Chet Ramey
2024-05-20 13:30 ` [TUHS] Re: A fuzzy awk Ralph Corderoy
2024-05-20 13:48 ` Chet Ramey
2024-05-20 3:54 ` [TUHS] Re: The 'usage: ...' message. (Was: On Bloat...) Bakul Shah via TUHS
2024-05-20 14:23 ` Clem Cole
2024-05-20 17:30 ` Greg A. Woods
2024-05-20 20:10 ` John Levine
2024-05-21 1:14 ` John Cowan
2024-05-20 17:40 ` Stuff Received
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2024-05-19 14:03 [TUHS] " Douglas McIlroy
2024-05-19 16:18 ` [TUHS] " Paul Winalski
2024-05-19 16:21 ` Paul Winalski
2024-05-19 20:42 ` Dave Horsfall
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