Re: [BUG] unknown node type 0 - SERIOUS ENOUGH TO MIGRATE AWAY FROM RUBY?

This is a long standing bug in Ruby, and has been reported hundreds of times 
by myself and many other people, but never addressed. Unfortunately, the 
usual response is "Give a small code example reproducing the problem", which 
is impossible (given the nature of the bug), so it gets overlooked.

Common themes seem to be

1) Its pretty random
2) Changing a source file, even by adding white space, often causes the 
problem to appear/dissappear
3) Test cases are worthless. It will undoutedly work on your machine. This is 
undoutedly some sort of nasty random read/write scribble bug.

These are other reports (A quick search on google/groups find 330+)

http://www.talkaboutprogramming.com/group/comp.lang.ruby/messages/116486.html

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/63237

http://www.generic-nic.net/dyn/mon/detail?tld=.pr_Puerto_Rico

http://rubyforge.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=1126

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=ruby+%5BBUG%5D+unknown+node+type+0&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=200409161610.24892.andrew%40walrond.org&rnum=1

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=ruby+%5BBUG%5D+unknown+node+type+0&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=200301302033.59645.uehli%40bluewin.ch&rnum=2

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=ruby+%5BBUG%5D+unknown+node+type+0&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=200304091208.00832.fg%40siamecommerce.com&rnum=3

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=ruby+%5BBUG%5D+unknown+node+type+0&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=1081211008.555546.15826.nullmailer%40picachu.netlab.jp&rnum=4

...

The problem is serious. It bites me, and many others, frequently. I use ruby 
based init scripts for my Rubyx linux distro, which is about as mission 
critical as it gets.

I have offered opportunities to debug a reproducible test case on one of my 
servers (see my previous post to ruby-core), but nobody seems interested. My 
time and resources are at your disposal; I am record as having already spent 
considerable time trying to solve this already. 

I love ruby and don't want to have to migrate away, but I _need_ reliability, 
and it's looking like my only option.

Yours, having a bad day,

Andrew Walrond

[ Imagine; Rubyx becomes Pythix, or Perlix  - Yuk!  :) ]

FWIW and for other sufferers, (my) empirical evidence suggests that building 
ruby with debug info (-g) makes the problem dissappear ... mostly ...