[comp.lang.perl] questions

asehgal@bwdls57.bnr.ca (Aditya Sehgal) (06/16/91)

I am using perl 4.0  at patch level 3 on a sparcstaion 1+ Sunos 4.0.3. 

I am getting the following Perl ERROR. The strange thing about this error
is that it doesnt' happen everytime when I execute my perl program but
sometimes. Has anyone else experienced the same and could they share their
experiences ?
-----------

Bad free() ignored at slinkrep.pl line 66, <IN> line 261.

Another question is that in the perl format TOP statement for printing a
header of a report, is there a way also to print the current date and 
time  ?

Thanks in advance,

 Aditya Sehgal
 asehgal@bnr.ca

dbruce@bnr.ca (D. Bruce) (06/19/91)

Hi Aditya!

In article <1991Jun15.174050.9277@bwdls61.bnr.ca> asehgal@bwdls57.bnr.ca (Aditya Sehgal) writes:
>
>I am using perl 4.0  at patch level 3 on a sparcstaion 1+ Sunos 4.0.3. 
>
>I am getting the following Perl ERROR. The strange thing about this error
>is that it doesnt' happen everytime when I execute my perl program but
>sometimes. Has anyone else experienced the same and could they share their
>experiences ?
>-----------
>
>Bad free() ignored at slinkrep.pl line 66, <IN> line 261.

  The 'malloc.c' supplied with perl patch 3 is generating this error
when it finds it's header trashed on a free. Either this malloc is
buggy, or perl is trying to free bad addresses. I'd rather suspect the 
malloc. Possibly a sign extension problem? (I'll dig deeper tomorrow)
I notice in patches 4-10 some reference to the built in malloc code.
So maybe it has been fixed. (We have been waiting till it's stable :-) )

  I have re-built perl 4p3 with the SUN malloc code, lets try
it tomorrow on your 'killer' code. .. :-)

>
>Another question is that in the perl format TOP statement for printing a
>header of a report, is there a way also to print the current date and 
>time  ?
>

Look at page 261 of Programming Perl.

>Thanks in advance,
>

You're welcome.

> Aditya Sehgal
> asehgal@bnr.ca
>


-- 
D. Bruce                       Bell-Northern Research  |opinions expressed
dbruce@bnr.ca                  P.O. Box 3511, Stn. C   |are my own, and not
(or internally dbruce@bwdls1)  Ottawa, ON, CANADA      |necessarily BNRs

flee@cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) (06/20/91)

>  The 'malloc.c' supplied with perl patch 3 is generating this error
>when it finds it's header trashed on a free.

There is a long-standing SunOS 4.x bug where some libc routine, I
believe it's the gettimeofday stuff, mallocs N bytes but writes N+1.
This is coincidentally harmless if you use Sun's malloc.

So if you're building Perl on a Sun, you should use Sun's malloc.
--
Felix Lee	flee@cs.psu.edu