From: David Alan Black <dblack@...>
Date: 2004-05-31T08:03:39+09:00
Subject: Re: [BUG?] Behavior of application changes when adding non-relevant puts

Hi --

Simon Strandgaard <neoneye@adslhome.dk> writes:

> Felix Nawothnig wrote:
> > On 05/30/2004 11:21:58 PM, Simon Strandgaard wrote:
> > > Ruby outputs lots of warnings.. what about getting rid of these first?
> > 
> > Looked through it - they are not related to my problem. The lines
> > causing warnings work exactly as they are supposed to.
> > 
> > > Another thing is that you make heavy usage of the upper ASCII range
> > > 128-255, this may cause different behavier with different locale.
> > 
> > Maybe it would cause outputting some strange chars - but certaintly not
> > the problem I'm encountering.
> 
> Some other issues I see, which could be dangerous.
> 
> 'evolution.rb',  you use bind/call/ancestors in a creative way.
> Your Object#evolve are also suspicious.
> If I were you I would unittest this file carefully.
> 
> 'noun.rb',  Kernel.send/define_method.
> Also suspicious to me.
> 
> 'basicthing.rb'  send feels kludgy.
> 
> It isn't clear to me what is going on, because of the above
> things you are using. I would try to use OOP, rather than
> Kernel.send/bind.. etc.

Not a big fan of introspection and/or intercession, I guess :-) In any
case I think there's more to it than this -- after all, those are
perfectly legitimate Ruby techniques, and although they can be used
incorrectly, using them does not fully explain why this change:

  $ diff basicthing.rb basicthing.rb.changed
  315c315
  <                       #puts "Heisenbug!"
  ---
  >                       puts "Heisenbug!"

would cause a dramatic difference in runtime behavior (in Ruby 1.8.1).
If Ruby's comment-parsing changes as a result of using send, I think
it's in everyone's interest to be aware of this :-)

(Not that I know exactly what's happening -- I wish I did -- still
scrutinizing it....)


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack@wobblini.net