Stefan Teleman writes: > > > Darren J Moffat wrote: > > >> The sad thing here is that it's really the bug-ridden application code > >> that mishandles NULL pointers that's of poor quality, so it's not > >> OpenSolaris's reputation that should be at stake. > > > > Oh I agree completely but we are the odd one out here. > > I apologize for interjecting in this discussion, but, wouldn't the character > string "(null)" or "(nichts)" or "<NULL>" being printed on stdout/stderr act > as > a clear indicator of the bug, and of its precise location ?
Actually, no, it's not. You know its apparent location in the stdout character stream, but nothing about where the problem might be in the code. And what's worse, if that error occurs during a script that invokes multiple utilities, then you've got almost zero information. You'll probably have to resort to running 'strings' on the binaries to locate the apparent culprit, and still not be close to finding the problem. A core dump, on the other hand, gives you precise information about the location of the problem and which process suffered it. I much prefer to have precise information about my bugs rather than log messages, particularly ones delivered to a user who can do nothing about them. For an extreme version of how far it can go, start up 'evince' in a terminal window. My favorite random error message is "some font thing failed" -- but it also spews a large number of warnings about NULL pointers. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <james.d.carlson at sun.com> Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
