clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) (02/09/91)
I installed Perl (PL18 - stable but old) onto a Motorola 8864 88000 RISC box. Greenhills C. It hangs when doing some moderately simple things. Such as: $list = `ls directory`; @L = split($list); print $L[0]; L[0], as printed, isn't a file name in the directory, and perl sits chewing cpu. It does this both with and without -O. With Perl's malloc it simply dumps core. It is an quite an old patch level, what I'm really asking is for those people using Perl on 88k's, especially heavy use, to drop me a line letting me know what patch level you're at, what problems you've encountered, and if you had to do anything special to get it to work. Thanks
lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) (02/12/91)
In article <1314@ecicrl.ocunix.on.ca> clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes:
: I installed Perl (PL18 - stable but old) onto a Motorola 8864 88000 RISC
: box. Greenhills C. It hangs when doing some moderately simple things.
: Such as:
: $list = `ls directory`;
: @L = split($list);
: print $L[0];
Er, that may be moderately simple, but it's also simply wrong. The first
argument to split is a pattern to split on. You're trying to split $_
using $list as a delimiter.
Earlier version of perl do unexpected things when you do unexpected things.
It's getting better, but feeding random stuff to the regular expression
parser is bound to do interesting things. In this particular case,
patchlevel 18 has a known problem with patterns containing more than 255
constant characters in a row.
Larryclewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) (02/14/91)
In article <11389@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) writes: >In article <1314@ecicrl.ocunix.on.ca> clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes: >: I installed Perl (PL18 - stable but old) onto a Motorola 8864 88000 RISC >: box. Greenhills C. It hangs when doing some moderately simple things. >: Such as: >: $list = `ls directory`; >: @L = split($list); >: print $L[0]; >Er, that may be moderately simple, but it's also simply wrong. The first >argument to split is a pattern to split on. You're trying to split $_ >using $list as a delimiter. Sorry. This is what comes of trying to reproduce the code from memory for a posting. Obviously I remembered it wrong. (This code has been in our software since mid-level patches of Perl 2.0, and it does work on all of the other platforms (ie: 386/ix, RS/6000, 3b1(!)). The m88k seems, well, a bit rough around the edges in the compiler department. What do you expect from a compiler that emits two lines of copyright notices every time you invoke it?) Anyhow, I have patched the perl on the m88k up to PL44. I get the following message from perl: panic: corrupt saved stack index at handlers/chkfiles line 113. handlers/chkfiles is a chunk of perl script, executed thusly: $handler = "handlers/chkfiles"; do $handler; Here's a chunk of handlers/chkfiles around line 113 (not from memory this time :-}): if ($ctype eq 'SL') { if ($crest) { $fullname = do symexpand($crest, $citem); $symlinks{$fullname} .= "$citem "; } else { $unklinks .= "$citem "; } next; } if ($ctype eq 'D') { if ($crest =~ 'forms a directory loop' && $dirloopokay{$citem}) { next; } push(direrr, "$citem\\$crest\\$caux"); next; } -> if ($ctype eq 'G') { push(grouperr, "$citem\\$crest\\$caux"); next; } if ($ctype eq 'F') { push(fileerr, "$citem\\$crest\\$caux"); next; } if ($ctype eq 'S') { push(tURGENT, "Severe chkfiles problem: $citem $crest $caux"); next; } do ersaerror("Unknown chkfiles record: $line\n"); "->" points to line 113. This is with optimization on, both with and without the malloc that comes with perl. I'll be futzing around with the optimizer and other flags tomorrow when I go beat on it again. When I commented out handlers/chkfiles, perl went on a memory allocation binge and was killed at 2K clicks... (on other platforms, 600 clicks is what it usually takes to run this code - this is a small part of several thousand lines of perl). There seems to have been several unofficial patches go by for PL44, but didn't save them, - would any of those help? Configure also said that this compiler was capable of casting "wierd floats to unsigned long" if that is suggestive of anything. Oh, and yes, regression testing: fails op.stat test 34 (thinks "." is a block special!), and lib.big test 62. I explored the op.stat problem, and it must be a compiler bug, or there's something severely wrong with the O/S... I tested "if (-c" and that does work properly. Will be further exploring tomorrow. If anyone out there has perl on a Motorola m88k, *please* let me know of your experiences. The compiler is V3.2, level 2 (supposedly the latest) Thanks, -- Chris Lewis, Phone: (613) 832-0541, Internet: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca UUCP: uunet!mitel!cunews!latour!ecicrl!clewis; Ferret Mailing List: (ferret-request@eci386); Psroff (not Adobe Transcript) enquiries: psroff-request@eci386, current patchlevel is *7*.