3 ms·

I actually would prefer to get the second output. The result is wrong, but consistantly and deterministically so. The naive implementation of the broken code is

I actually would prefer to get the second output. The result is wrong, but consistantly and deterministically so. The naive implementation of the broken code is a heisenbug. Sometimes it will work, and sometimes it won't, and any attempt to debug it would likely perterb the system enough to make the issue not surface. It wouldn't suprise me if I have run into the latter situation without relizing it. When I got the the problem, I would have just (incorrectly) assumed that the memory right after the array happened to have the relevent value. I would be counting my blessings that it happened consistantly enough to be debuggable.

jll29 3y ago
I agree that it is better to get deterministic and predictable behavior. Reminds me of when for a while, I worked on HP 9000s under HP-UX and in parallel on an Intel 80486-based Linux box, and what I noticed is that the Unix workstations crashed sooner and more predictably with segmentation faults than Linux on the PC (not sure if this has changed since the early 1990s - probably had to do with the MMU); so developing on HP under Unix and then finally compiling under Linux led to better code quality.