Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!midway!news
From: keith@curry.uchicago.edu (Keith Waclena)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Perl PL 28 fails op.dbm on SparcStation 1
Summary: dumps 8 meg of core in dbm_store
Keywords: ndbm; core; blooie
Message-ID: <1990Aug17.031514.14790@midway.uchicago.edu>
Date: 17 Aug 90 03:15:14 GMT
Sender: news@midway.uchicago.edu (News Administrator)
Reply-To: keith@curry.uchicago.edu (Keith Waclena)
Organization: TIRA / UofC
Lines: 29

Well, I've been waiting to see if anybody else was going to report
this, but it looks like I'm going to be the first.

Perl at PL 27 and also at PL 28 both fail op.dbm, dumping core in a
big way.  Here is a trivial script that illustrates the problem:

    dbmopen(FOO, "Foo", 0644) || die "Whoops.. $!\n";
    $FOO{123} = 1;

It blows up in the assignment.  Single stepping in GDB shows that the
core dump occurs in dbm_store!  All the args to the dbm_store look
fine (as fas as I can tell...).  Perl at PL 18 handle dbm stuff just
fine; in fact I have a large investment in Perl code that uses dbm
heavily.  Sorta cramps my style...

Anyway, my environment is Sun SparcStation-1 running SunOS Release
4.0.3.  I compiled with both Sun's cc and Gnu cc; same results.  Also
blows up on a Sun 4/110 running SunOS 4.0.

As a test, I changed Perl to use Gnu dbm, and it works!  This isn't
helpful though as now all my huge dbm indices are incompatible.  I
repeat that Sun's ndbm always worked up through PL 18.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

--
Keith WACLENA                             keith@tira.uchicago.edu
CILS / TIRA / U of Chicago                keith%tira@uchimvs1.bitnet
1100 E.57th.St Chi IL 60637 USA           ...!uunet!tira.uchicago.edu!keith