Re: [Gcl-devel] Calling for top ten ANSI issues ...

[Paul F. Dietz]

Camm Maguire wrote:

> Greetings!  I think its time to work on this some more.  What are the
> top ten issues in order of priority revealed by Paul's latest tests?

Here's a list of ten bugs (or classes of bugs) from the test suite that
may have a high impact on the test suite.  Take this as advisory only,
though, and work on what seems easiest to you.

(BTW, do *not* work on the (array nil) or nil-string tests until
everything else is out of the way, if then.  My guess is these 'features'
will be removed from the spec at some point.)


1. When a condition is defined, it's not always detected as a subtype
  of CONDITION.

   Example:
   Test CONDITION-1/IS-SUBTYPE-OF/CONDITION failed
   Form: (SUBTYPEP* 'CONDITION-1 'CONDITION)
   Expected values: T
                    T
   Actual values: NIL
                  NIL.

2. :ALLOW-OTHER-KEYS processing is broken

   Example: (MAKE-LIST.ALLOW-OTHER-KEYS.4)

   (MAKE-LIST 5 :ALLOW-OTHER-KEYS T :ALLOW-OTHER-KEYS NIL 'BAD T)
     Should be: (nil nil nil nil nil)
     gcl instead: raises an error
     The *leftmost* occurence of :ALLOW-OTHER-KEYS has priority
       over later occurences of the same keyword parameter.

3. Some number comparison tests cause the test driver to break.

   <.4, <=.4, >.4, >=.4 all raise a condition that can't be printed:

    Test <.4 failed
    Form: (LOOP
            FOR
            (X Y RESULT . REST)
            IN
            *NUMBER-LESS-TESTS*
            UNLESS
            (IF (< X Y) RESULT (NOT RESULT))
            COLLECT
            (LIST* X Y RESULT REST))
    Expected value: NIL
    Actual value:
    Error in EVAL [or a callee]: Can't print a non-number.

    Fast links are on: do (use-fast-links nil) for debugging
    Broken at DO-TEST.  Type :H for Help.
     1 (Abort) Return to top level.
    dbl:CL-TEST>>

4. Builtin method combinations aren't working.

   See the DEFGENERIC-METHOD-COMBINATION* tests, as well as the CPL
   tests (which use a nonstandard builtin method combination.)

5. LOOP errors

   These can probably be fixed by using the CMUCL or SBCL LOOP macro.

6. Numerous error cases not properly handled.

   Many list functions, for example, are required to signal a type error
  if the list argument is not a proper list (see many of the error cases
  in tests loaded from load-cons.lsp.)

7. The function SIMPLE-CONDITION-FORMAT-CONTROL isn't defined, and
  SIMPLE-ERROR doesn't admit a :FORMAT-CONTROL initialization argument.
  (There's much more condition-related breakage, but I haven't gone
   through that in detail.)

8. (SETF <symbol>) should be a valid function name.

9. PARSE-INTEGER should produce PARSE-ERRORs, not STREAM-ERRORs.

10. I've put together a random stress tester (see random-int-form.lsp).
  This is having great impact on flushing out compiler bugs in other
  lisps, but I can't get it to run anything in gcl.  Could this be fixed?


Finally: BROADCAST-STREAM isn't defined, but I haven't written stream
tests yet.  This is breaking a few tests of other things.

        Paul