[ruby-talk:5979] RE: Garbage collection bug: unknown data type 40

Jo reports:
> The following is a program that makes ruby crash with the error
> message:
> 
> ./bicapitalize.rb:19: [BUG] gc_sweep(): unknown data type 40
> ruby 1.6.1 (2000-09-27) [i586-linux-gnu]
> Aborted

Doesn't crash on me.

  $ cat /etc/redhat-release 
  Red Hat Linux release 6.1 (Cartman)

  $ ruby -v
  ruby 1.6.2 (2000-10-16) [i686-linux]

  $ uname -a
  Linux 2.2.12-20smp #1 SMP Mon Sep 27 10:34:45 EDT 1999 i686 unknown

> and writing to stdout. With a sufficiently large input, the error
> message will appear. At least on my machine:

Or then I didn't have "sufficiently large input". My test was chunk of ruby
code 110MB (this small lib of mine doesn't follow the rule Don't Repeat
Yourself literally :). The running time was 10:10 and the process kept
steadily it's hunger for memory around 1.4 MB.

As I couldn't get it crash I didn't try to make it smaller. Are you sure
there's nothing on your example program which could be taken away and still
crash on every run.

	- Aleksi

Ps. without any doubt you know you can achieve elite-style output shorter by
saying:

  cat input | ruby -pe 'gsub!(/\w/){|c| rand < .3 ? c.upcase : c.downcase }'

:)