[aklug] Re: The Phantom Bug

On Thu, 16 Apr 2009, Joshua J. Kugler wrote:
> On Thursday 16 April 2009, Christopher Howard said something like:
>> (*beats head against wall*) Have you ever noticed, whenever you are
>> coding a program, that there is always that one illusory bug. It
>> shows up without fail at run time, but for all that is good and
>> virtuous you can never find it in the actual code. You run over your
>> syntax line by line until your eyes fall out, but some how just as
>> you get close it realizes you are coming and hides somewhere else.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unusual_software_bug#Heisenbug
>
> --
> Joshua Kugler
> Part-Time System Admin/Programmer
> http://www.eeinternet.com
> PGP Key: http://pgp.mit.edu/  ID 0xDB26D7CE
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>

Hm, I think it must be a Heisenbug. Its one of those weird scenerios (for
the curious) where the code works perfectly fine with a string of any
length, unless the string is four elements long (!) I should be able to
deduce the problem from that, but each time I look at the code I can't
seem to figure out why it works for two elements or for three elements or
for five, but not for four. (???)

Anyway, about to take another look. I'm going to chain my sanity to the
desk now, so I don't lose it.

-- 
Christopher Howard
http://indicium.us
http://theologia.indicium.us
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