ccc_ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) (05/03/90)
In <1990May2.214126.18304@agate.berkeley.edu>, c60c-3cf@web-3a.berkeley.edu (Dan Kogai) says "UNIX is far better ... Core dump is better than Bomb Alert or Macsbug screen..." I say "Bleah!" to core dumps. I much prefer the VMS "traceback" facility. Here's an example: %RMS-F-SYN, file specification syntax error %TRACE-F-TRACEBACK, symbolic stack dump follows module name routine name line rel PC abs PC DIRECTORY_STACK PARSE_DEFAULT 540 000000AD 00000E0D DIRECTORY_STACK DO_PUSH 599 00000022 00001452 DIRECTORY_STACK DO_COMMAND 1062 0000003B 0000106F DIRECTORY_STACK DIRECTORY_STACK 1099 0000003E 0000102E Cryptic error messages aside, often that's all the information you need to find a bug in your program. And the overhead? About 10% extra in the size of the on-disk application file, *zero* in-memory space and run-time overhead--until your program bombs. And this is the level of debugging you get by default! Lawrence D'Oliveiro Computer Services Dept fone: +64-71-562-889 University of Waikato fax: +64-71-384-066 Hamilton, New Zealand electric mail: ldo@waikato.ac.nz I think, therefore I can't thwim.