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From: wombat@ccvaxa.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: catering to bad code
Message-ID: <28200009@ccvaxa>
Date: Sun, 22-Feb-87 18:45:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ccvaxa.28200009
Posted: Sun Feb 22 18:45:00 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Feb-87 20:58:37 EST
References: <14833@amdcad.UUCP>
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Nf-ID: #R:amdcad.UUCP:14833:ccvaxa:28200009:000:1044
Nf-From: ccvaxa.UUCP!wombat    Feb 22 17:45:00 1987


/* Written 11:33 pm  Feb 19, 1987 by john@uw-nsr.UUCP in ccvaxa:comp.arch */
At any rate it has been my experience that something like 70 - 80 %
of the C programs I have ported have had pointer problems.
/* End of text from ccvaxa:comp.arch */

Grepping through the Gould UTX 2.0 sources, I found 19 standard 4.3BSD
progams (out of about 420) had been altered so as to survive in the
crash-'em-on-null-pointer-dereferences environment. Or rather, that's
how many had the change commented, and any change to user-level code is
supposed to be commented.

Around here we run some machines with protect-bit on (crash offending
programs) and some with it off, but anything to be released must be
tested on a machine with protect-bit on. The ability to turn it off is
useful if you have binary-only 3rd-party software that misbehaves.


"My words say what you hear them say, but the movements of my mouth
indicate that I am telling a series of humorous stories in Yiddish."
R.A. Lafferty, *The Devil Is Dead*		Wombat
					ihnp4!uiucdcs!ccvaxa!wombat