RH6.1 coredump: float("10.01")

[Matthew Dixon Cowles]

In article <3915ECBB.C9A780B6 at rubic.com>, Jeff Bauer <jbauer at rubic.com>
wrote:

> I recently discovered a problem using the built-in
> float() function on a client's RedHat 6.1 server.
> 
>     >>> float("10.01")
>     Segmentation fault (core dumped)

[snip]

> I've duplicated this problem in C (egcs-2.91.66)
> on this particular machine, so it's not a problem 
> with the Python interpreter.  No problem on various 
> SuSE Linuxes using egcs-2.91.66.

[snip]

Jeff,
I'd be surprised if Red Hat shipped a C library that was broken in such
an obvious way. (I'll cheerfully believe that everyone ships C
libraries that are broken in subtle ways.) I can confirm that the
problem doesn't happen here:

$ cat /etc/issue

Red Hat Linux release 6.1 (Cartman)
Kernel 2.2.12-20 on an i686

$ /usr/bin/python
Python 1.5.2 (#1, Sep 17 1999, 20:15:36)  [GCC egcs-2.91.66
19990314/Linux (egcs- on linux-i386
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> float("10.01")
10.01
>>>

I would have a look at what might be up with the libraries on the
machine.

Regards,
Matt