2.0*4 ==> Bus error on IRIX 6.5

[Michael Hudson]

Steve ROBBINS <stever at bic.mni.mcgill.ca> writes:

> I just built python 2.1.3 on an IRIX 6.5 machine (Origin 200) using
> MIPSpro compilers (Version 7.30) and the test suite fails.

Compile Objects/floatobject.c without optimization.

> It turns out that multiplying a float by an integer causes a
> bus error:
> 
>   $ ./python
>   Python 2.1.3 (#2, Apr 17 2002, 09:37:30) [C] on irix646
>   Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>   >>> 2.0*4 
>   Bus error (core dumped)
> 
> 
> [Oddly, it works if you multiply two floats or two integers]
> 
> From the core dump, I see that the fault happens here:
> 
>   #0  0x1004fd7c in float_mul () at floatobject.c:382
>   382             CONVERT_TO_DOUBLE(v, a);
> 
> 
> I looked on the python.org web pages, FAQs, etc and didn't
> find any similar problem reported.

I find this slightly hard to believe; it's certainly come up many,
many times before.  If true, something should be added to the FAQ.

> I couldn't find the way to search the python bug tracker,

Go to http://sf.net/projects/python, click on "bugs".  Then there
should be a text area somewhere you can type in together with a button
labelled "search".  You can tell I didn't design this website...

> so I had a quick look at the summary lines.  There was one about
> alignment that caught my eye (#472568) but the workaround suggested
> there does not ameliorate the situation.

This will (probably) be because previous reports of this problem have
been closed as "3rd Party".

> Help?

Hope this did.

Cheers,
M.

-- 
40. There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third
    one works.
  -- Alan Perlis, http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html