sorrow@oak.circa.ufl.edu (06/19/91)
Well, here is the general review of BoundsChecker for DOS. For those of you who don't know, BoundsChecker is a program that allows you find nasty pointer problems. It requires the following: 386 256K extended memory To be useful, IMHO, it should also be used with either TC or MSC (which use the correct symbolic debug info...ie info that BoundsChecker knows). Of the replies I got, 4 were positive and 1 was not. I ordered it last week and it arrived today. I haev had some time to play with it and have found it to be an outstanding product for WHAT IT DOES. The one dissenter amongst the responders stated that he believed Turbo Debugger 386 was superior. As far as I am concerned, BoundsChcker is not a generic debugger. You can't watch variables, etc. All you can do is run your program and hope that somewhere you don't overwrite an array boundary or part of your code. It is highly recommened for software QA and finding nasty pointer bugs. While using it today I must conclude that if you are a professional programmer who uses C (and thus must deal with its wanton ability to kill your programs) then this is a MUST. It will trap the following bugs: char a[80]; int i=0; for (i=0;i<=80;i++) a[i]=0; It will also catch other things such as: (char *)p=malloc(100); *(p+101)=0; Or executing a NULL isnrtuction, etc. And the beauty of it all is that, yes, in a dos environment you will have a problem with it at first due to all the LEGAL memory overwrites you do. However, these can be ignored and placed in an exception file so that it skips over them. Bad pointers can be found in less than two minutes. It so far has proven to be wonderful. As a debugger, it is hideous. As a bug killer, it's great! Nu-Mega Software makes it, along with a program called Soft-Ice and CV/1. They seem to be knowledgable. You can find their add in Byte, Dr. Dobbs, etc. Brian /* Brian Hook -- MS-DOS Programmer for Contract ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Seamus, that's my dog...I saw her today at the reception...sorry, sixTEEN inches....better save the women and children first...but this one goes to 11! ..anymore of that plutonium nyborg?....there can be only ONE!....like a finger pointing to the moon....ease the seat back...one day closer to death */