Re: Languages that are hard to parse

Martin Ward <Martin.Ward@durham.ac.uk>
24 May 2005 10:19:53 -0400

          From comp.compilers
Related articles
[7 earlier articles]
Re: Languages that are hard to parse henry@spsystems.net (2005-05-21)
Re: Languages that are hard to parse gah@ugcs.caltech.edu (glen herrmannsfeldt) (2005-05-22)
Re: Languages that are hard to parse Satyam@satyam.com.ar (Satyam) (2005-05-22)
Re: Languages that are hard to parse DrDiettrich@compuserve.de (Hans-Peter Diettrich) (2005-05-22)
Re: Languages that are hard to parse dot@dotat.at (Tony Finch) (2005-05-24)
Re: Languages that are hard to parse wclodius@lanl.gov (2005-05-24)
Re: Languages that are hard to parse Martin.Ward@durham.ac.uk (Martin Ward) (2005-05-24)
Re: Languages that are hard to parse ralph@inputplus.co.uk (2005-05-26)
Re: Languages that are hard to parse hannah@schlund.de (2005-06-02)
Re: Languages that are hard to parse zvr@pobox.com (Alexios Zavras) (2005-06-02)
Re: Languages that are hard to parse gene@abhost.us (Gene Wirchenko) (2005-06-04)
| List of all articles for this month |
From: Martin Ward <Martin.Ward@durham.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 24 May 2005 10:19:53 -0400
Organization: Compilers Central
References: 05-05-119 05-05-192 05-05-196
Keywords: debug, practice
Posted-Date: 24 May 2005 10:19:53 EDT

On Sunday 22 May 2005 05:55, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
> I might have mentioned it before, but this reminds me again of stories
> I used to hear about testing compilers with cards from the card
> recycling bin.
> ...
> Now that cards are gone, it is hard to find a good substitute.


The modern substitute of the card recycling bin is the cvs repository
or RCS directories or whatever. A simple perl script can pick random lines
from random files to create a program and feed it to the compiler.
Repeat until the compiler segfaults or hangs.


There's also /dev/random, of course.


For the FermaT program transformation system, I wrote a small
program which generates random WSL programs and attempts
to apply random transformations at random positions.
It caught a few bugs.


--
Martin


Martin.Ward@durham.ac.uk http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/ Erdos number: 4
G.K.Chesterton web site: http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/

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