REPORTING BUGS Bugs can be reported on the help mailing list sbcl-help@lists.sourceforge.net or on the development mailing list sbcl-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Please include enough information in a bug report that someone reading it can reproduce the problem, i.e. don't write Subject: apparent bug in PRINT-OBJECT (or *PRINT-LENGTH*?) PRINT-OBJECT doesn't seem to work with *PRINT-LENGTH*. Is this a bug? but instead Subject: apparent bug in PRINT-OBJECT (or *PRINT-LENGTH*?) In sbcl-1.2.3 running under OpenBSD 4.5 on my Alpha box, when I compile and load the file (DEFSTRUCT (FOO (:PRINT-OBJECT (LAMBDA (X Y) (LET ((*PRINT-LENGTH* 4)) (PRINT X Y))))) X Y) then at the command line type (MAKE-FOO) the program loops endlessly instead of printing the object. NOTES: There is also some information on bugs in the manual page and in the TODO file. Eventually more such information may move here. The gaps in the number sequence belong to old bug descriptions which have gone away (typically because they were fixed, but sometimes for other reasons, e.g. because they were moved elsewhere). KNOWN BUGS OF NO SPECIAL CLASS: 2: DEFSTRUCT almost certainly should overwrite the old LAYOUT information instead of just punting when a contradictory structure definition is loaded. As it is, if you redefine DEFSTRUCTs in a way which changes their layout, you probably have to rebuild your entire program, even if you know or guess enough about the internals of SBCL to wager that this (undefined in ANSI) operation would be safe. 3: "type checking of structure slots" a: ANSI specifies that a type mismatch in a structure slot initialization value should not cause a warning. WORKAROUND: This one might not be fixed for a while because while we're big believers in ANSI compatibility and all, (1) there's no obvious simple way to do it (short of disabling all warnings for type mismatches everywhere), and (2) there's a good portable workaround, and (3) by their own reasoning, it looks as though ANSI may have gotten it wrong. ANSI justifies this specification by saying The restriction against issuing a warning for type mismatches between a slot-initform and the corresponding slot's :TYPE option is necessary because a slot-initform must be specified in order to specify slot options; in some cases, no suitable default may exist. However, in SBCL (as in CMU CL or, for that matter, any compiler which really understands Common Lisp types) a suitable default does exist, in all cases, because the compiler understands the concept of functions which never return (i.e. has return type NIL). Thus, as a portable workaround, you can use a call to some known-never-to-return function as the default. E.g. (DEFSTRUCT FOO (BAR (ERROR "missing :BAR argument") :TYPE SOME-TYPE-TOO-HAIRY-TO-CONSTRUCT-AN-INSTANCE-OF)) or (DECLAIM (FTYPE (FUNCTION () NIL) MISSING-ARG)) (DEFUN REQUIRED-ARG () ; workaround for SBCL non-ANSI slot init typing (ERROR "missing required argument")) (DEFSTRUCT FOO (BAR (REQUIRED-ARG) :TYPE TRICKY-TYPE-OF-SOME-SORT) (BLETCH (REQUIRED-ARG) :TYPE TRICKY-TYPE-OF-SOME-SORT) (N-REFS-SO-FAR 0 :TYPE (INTEGER 0))) Such code should compile without complaint and work correctly either on SBCL or on any other completely compliant Common Lisp system. b: &AUX argument in a boa-constructor without a default value means "do not initilize this slot" and does not cause type error. But an error may be signalled at read time and it would be good if SBCL did it. c: Reading of not initialized slot sometimes causes SEGV. d: (declaim (optimize (safety 3) (speed 1) (space 1))) (defstruct foo x y) (defstruct (stringwise-foo (:include foo (x "x" :type simple-string) (y "y" :type simple-string)))) (defparameter *stringwise-foo* (make-stringwise-foo)) (setf (foo-x *stringwise-foo*) 0) (defun frob-stringwise-foo (sf) (aref (stringwise-foo-x sf) 0)) (frob-stringwise-foo *stringwise-foo*) SEGV. 6: bogus warnings about undefined functions for magic functions like SB!C::%%DEFUN and SB!C::%DEFCONSTANT when cross-compiling files like src/code/float.lisp. Fixing this will probably require straightening out enough bootstrap consistency issues that the cross-compiler can run with *TYPE-SYSTEM-INITIALIZED*. Instead, the cross-compiler runs in a slightly flaky state which is sane enough to compile SBCL itself, but which is also unstable in several ways, including its inability to really grok function declarations. As of sbcl-0.7.5, sbcl's cross-compiler does run with *TYPE-SYSTEM-INITIALIZED*; however, this bug remains. 7: The "compiling top-level form:" output ought to be condensed. Perhaps any number of such consecutive lines ought to turn into a single "compiling top-level forms:" line. 10: The way that the compiler munges types with arguments together with types with no arguments (in e.g. TYPE-EXPAND) leads to weirdness visible to the user: (DEFTYPE FOO () 'FIXNUM) (TYPEP 11 'FOO) => T (TYPEP 11 '(FOO)) => T, which seems weird (TYPEP 11 'FIXNUM) => T (TYPEP 11 '(FIXNUM)) signals an error, as it should The situation is complicated by the presence of Common Lisp types like UNSIGNED-BYTE (which can either be used in list form or alone) so I'm not 100% sure that the behavior above is actually illegal. But I'm 90+% sure, and the following related behavior, (TYPEP 11 'AND) => T treating the bare symbol AND as equivalent to '(AND), is specifically forbidden (by the ANSI specification of the AND type). 11: It would be nice if the caught ERROR: (during macroexpansion) said what macroexpansion was at fault, e.g. caught ERROR: (during macroexpansion of IN-PACKAGE, during macroexpansion of DEFFOO) 15: (SUBTYPEP '(FUNCTION (T BOOLEAN) NIL) '(FUNCTION (FIXNUM FIXNUM) NIL)) => T, T (Also, when this is fixed, we can enable the code in PROCLAIM which checks for incompatible FTYPE redeclarations.) 19: (I *think* this is a bug. It certainly seems like strange behavior. But the ANSI spec is scary, dark, and deep.. -- WHN) (FORMAT NIL "~,1G" 1.4) => "1. " (FORMAT NIL "~3,1G" 1.4) => "1. " 20: from Marco Antoniotti on cmucl-imp mailing list 1 Mar 2000: (defclass ccc () ()) (setf (find-class 'ccc1) (find-class 'ccc)) (defmethod zut ((c ccc1)) 123) In sbcl-0.7.1.13, this gives an error, There is no class named CCC1. DTC's recommended workaround from the mailing list 3 Mar 2000: (setf (pcl::find-class 'ccc1) (pcl::find-class 'ccc)) 27: Sometimes (SB-EXT:QUIT) fails with Argh! maximum interrupt nesting depth (4096) exceeded, exiting Process inferior-lisp exited abnormally with code 1 I haven't noticed a repeatable case of this yet. 32: The printer doesn't report closures very well. This is true in CMU CL 18b as well: (PRINT #'CLASS-NAME) gives # It would be nice to make closures have a settable name slot, and make things like DEFSTRUCT and FLET, which create closures, set helpful values into this slot. 33: And as long as we're wishing, it would be awfully nice if INSPECT could also report on closures, telling about the values of the bound variables. 35: The compiler assumes that any time a function of declared FTYPE doesn't signal an error, its arguments were of the declared type. E.g. compiling and loading (DECLAIM (OPTIMIZE (SAFETY 3))) (DEFUN FACTORIAL (X) (GAMMA (1+ X))) (DEFUN GAMMA (X) X) (DECLAIM (FTYPE (FUNCTION (UNSIGNED-BYTE)) FACTORIAL)) (DEFUN FOO (X) (COND ((> (FACTORIAL X) 1.0E6) (FORMAT T "too big~%")) ((INTEGERP X) (FORMAT T "exactly ~S~%" (FACTORIAL X))) (T (FORMAT T "approximately ~S~%" (FACTORIAL X))))) then executing (FOO 1.5) will cause the INTEGERP case to be selected, giving bogus output a la exactly 2.5 This violates the "declarations are assertions" principle. According to the ANSI spec, in the section "System Class FUNCTION", this is a case of "lying to the compiler", but the lying is done by the code which calls FACTORIAL with non-UNSIGNED-BYTE arguments, not by the unexpectedly general definition of FACTORIAL. In any case, "declarations are assertions" means that lying to the compiler should cause an error to be signalled, and should not cause a bogus result to be returned. Thus, the compiler should not assume that arbitrary functions check their argument types. (It might make sense to add another flag (CHECKED?) to DEFKNOWN to identify functions which *do* check their argument types.) (Also, verify that the compiler handles declared function return types as assertions.) 41: TYPEP of VALUES types is sometimes implemented very inefficiently, e.g. in (DEFTYPE INDEXOID () '(INTEGER 0 1000)) (DEFUN FOO (X) (DECLARE (TYPE INDEXOID X)) (THE (VALUES INDEXOID) (VALUES X))) where the implementation of the type check in function FOO includes a full call to %TYPEP. There are also some fundamental problems with the interpretation of VALUES types (inherited from CMU CL, and from the ANSI CL standard) as discussed on the cmucl-imp@cons.org mailing list, e.g. in Robert Maclachlan's post of 21 Jun 2000. 42: The definitions of SIGCONTEXT-FLOAT-REGISTER and %SET-SIGCONTEXT-FLOAT-REGISTER in x86-vm.lisp say they're not supported on FreeBSD because the floating point state is not saved, but at least as of FreeBSD 4.0, the floating point state *is* saved, so they could be supported after all. Very likely SIGCONTEXT-FLOATING-POINT-MODES could now be supported, too. 43: (as discussed by Douglas Crosher on the cmucl-imp mailing list ca. Aug. 10, 2000): CMUCL currently interprets 'member as '(member); same issue with 'union, 'and, 'or etc. So even though according to the ANSI spec, bare 'MEMBER, 'AND, and 'OR are not legal types, CMUCL (and now SBCL) interpret them as legal types. 45: a slew of floating-point-related errors reported by Peter Van Eynde on July 25, 2000: b: SBCL's value for LEAST-POSITIVE-SHORT-FLOAT is bogus, and should probably be 1.4012985e-45. In SBCL, (/ LEAST-POSITIVE-SHORT-FLOAT 2) returns a number smaller than LEAST-POSITIVE-SHORT-FLOAT. Similar problems exist for LEAST-NEGATIVE-SHORT-FLOAT, LEAST-POSITIVE-LONG-FLOAT, and LEAST-NEGATIVE-LONG-FLOAT. c: Many expressions generate floating infinity on x86/Linux: (/ 1 0.0) (/ 1 0.0d0) (EXPT 10.0 1000) (EXPT 10.0d0 1000) PVE's regression tests want them to raise errors. sbcl-0.7.0.5 on x86/Linux generates the infinities instead. That might or might not be conforming behavior, but it's also inconsistent, which is almost certainly wrong. (Inconsistency: (/ 1 0.0) should give the same result as (/ 1.0 0.0), but instead (/ 1 0.0) generates SINGLE-FLOAT-POSITIVE-INFINITY and (/ 1.0 0.0) signals an error. d: (in section12.erg) various forms a la (FLOAT 1 DOUBLE-FLOAT-EPSILON) don't give the right behavior. 46: type safety errors reported by Peter Van Eynde July 25, 2000: c: (COERCE 'AND 'FUNCTION) returns something related to (MACRO-FUNCTION 'AND), but ANSI says it should raise an error. k: READ-BYTE is supposed to signal TYPE-ERROR when its argument is not a binary input stream, but instead cheerfully reads from character streams, e.g. (MAKE-STRING-INPUT-STREAM "abc"). 47: DEFCLASS bugs reported by Peter Van Eynde July 25, 2000: d: (DEFGENERIC IF (X)) should signal a PROGRAM-ERROR, but instead causes a COMPILER-ERROR. 51: miscellaneous errors reported by Peter Van Eynde July 25, 2000: a: (PROGN (DEFGENERIC FOO02 (X)) (DEFMETHOD FOO02 ((X NUMBER)) T) (LET ((M (FIND-METHOD (FUNCTION FOO02) NIL (LIST (FIND-CLASS (QUOTE NUMBER)))))) (REMOVE-METHOD (FUNCTION FOO02) M) (DEFGENERIC FOO03 (X)) (ADD-METHOD (FUNCTION FOO03) M))) should give an error, but SBCL allows it. 52: It has been reported (e.g. by Peter Van Eynde) that there are several metaobject protocol "errors". (In order to fix them, we might need to document exactly what metaobject protocol specification we're following -- the current code is just inherited from PCL.) 60: The debugger LIST-LOCATIONS command doesn't work properly. 61: Compiling and loading (DEFUN FAIL (X) (THROW 'FAIL-TAG X)) (FAIL 12) then requesting a BACKTRACE at the debugger prompt gives no information about where in the user program the problem occurred. 63: Paul Werkowski wrote on cmucl-imp@cons.org 2000-11-15 I am looking into this problem that showed up on the cmucl-help list. It seems to me that the "implementation specific environment hacking functions" found in pcl/walker.lisp are completely messed up. The good thing is that they appear to be barely used within PCL and the munged environment object is passed to cmucl only in calls to macroexpand-1, which is probably why this case fails. SBCL uses essentially the same code, so if the environment hacking is screwed up, it affects us too. 64: Using the pretty-printer from the command prompt gives funny results, apparently because the pretty-printer doesn't know about user's command input, including the user's carriage return that the user, and therefore the pretty-printer thinks that the new output block should start indented 2 or more characters rightward of the correct location. 67: As reported by Winton Davies on a CMU CL mailing list 2000-01-10, and reported for SBCL by Martin Atzmueller 2000-10-20: (TRACE GETHASH) crashes SBCL. In general tracing anything which is used in the implementation of TRACE is likely to have the same problem. 75: As reported by Martin Atzmueller on sbcl-devel 26 Dec 2000, ANSI says that WITH-OUTPUT-TO-STRING should have a keyword :ELEMENT-TYPE, but in sbcl-0.6.9 this is not defined for WITH-OUTPUT-TO-STRING. 78: ANSI says in one place that type declarations can be abbreviated even when the type name is not a symbol, e.g. (DECLAIM ((VECTOR T) *FOOVECTOR*)) SBCL doesn't support this. But ANSI says in another place that this isn't allowed. So it's not clear this is a bug after all. (See the e-mail on cmucl-help@cons.org on 2001-01-16 and 2001-01-17 from WHN and Pierre Mai.) 79: as pointed out by Dan Barlow on sbcl-devel 2000-07-02: The PICK-TEMPORARY-FILE-NAME utility used by LOAD-FOREIGN uses an easily guessable temporary filename in a way which might open applications using LOAD-FOREIGN to hijacking by malicious users on the same machine. Incantations for doing this safely are floating around the net in various "how to write secure programs despite Unix" documents, and it would be good to (1) fix this in LOAD-FOREIGN, and (2) hunt for any other code which uses temporary files and make it share the same new safe logic. (partially alleviated in sbcl-0.7.9.32 by a fix by Matthew Danish to make the temporary filename less easily guessable) 82: Functions are assigned names based on the context in which they're defined. This is less than ideal for the functions which are used to implement CLOS methods. E.g. the output of (DESCRIBE 'PRINT-OBJECT) lists functions like # and # It would be better if these functions' names always identified them as methods, and identified their generic functions and specializers. 83: RANDOM-INTEGER-EXTRA-BITS=10 may not be large enough for the RANDOM RNG to be high quality near RANDOM-FIXNUM-MAX; it looks as though the mean of the distribution can be systematically O(0.1%) wrong. Just increasing R-I-E-B is probably not a good solution, since it would decrease efficiency more than is probably necessary. Perhaps using some sort of accept/reject method would be better. 85: Internally the compiler sometimes evaluates (sb-kernel:type/= (specifier-type '*) (specifier-type t)) (I stumbled across this when I added an (assert (not (eq type1 *wild-type*))) in the NAMED :SIMPLE-= type method.) '* isn't really a type, and in a type context should probably be translated to T, and so it's probably wrong to ask whether it's equal to the T type and then (using the EQ type comparison in the NAMED :SIMPLE-= type method) return NIL. (I haven't tried to investigate this bug enough to guess whether there might be any user-level symptoms.) In fact, the type system is likely to depend on this inequality not holding... * is not equivalent to T in many cases, such as (VECTOR *) /= (VECTOR T). 94a: Inconsistencies between derived and declared VALUES return types for DEFUN aren't checked very well. E.g. the logic which successfully catches problems like (declaim (ftype (function (fixnum) float) foo)) (defun foo (x) (declare (type integer x)) (values x)) ; wrong return type, detected, gives warning, good! fails to catch (declaim (ftype (function (t) (values t t)) bar)) (defun bar (x) (values x)) ; wrong number of return values, no warning, bad! The cause of this is seems to be that (1) the internal function VALUES-TYPES-EQUAL-OR-INTERSECT used to make the check handles its arguments symmetrically, and (2) when the type checking code was written back when when SBCL's code was still CMU CL, the intent was that this case (declaim (ftype (function (t) t) bar)) (defun bar (x) (values x x)) ; wrong number of return values; should give warning? not be warned for, because a two-valued return value is considered to be compatible with callers who expects a single value to be returned. That intent is probably not appropriate for modern ANSI Common Lisp, but fixing this might be complicated because of other divergences between auld-style and new-style handling of multiple-VALUES types. (Some issues related to this were discussed on cmucl-imp at some length sometime in 2000.) 95: The facility for dumping a running Lisp image to disk gets confused when run without the PURIFY option, and creates an unnecessarily large core file (apparently representing memory usage up to the previous high-water mark). Moreover, when the file is loaded, it confuses the GC, so that thereafter memory usage can never be reduced below that level. 98: In sbcl-0.6.11.41 (and in all earlier SBCL, and in CMU CL), out-of-line structure slot setters are horribly inefficient whenever the type of the slot is declared, because out-of-line structure slot setters are implemented as closures to save space, so the compiler doesn't compile the type test into code, but instead just saves the type in a lexical closure and interprets it at runtime. A proper solution involves deciding whether it's really worth saving space by implementing structure slot accessors as closures. (If it's not worth it, the problem vanishes automatically. If it is worth it, there are hacks we could use to force type tests to be compiled anyway, and even shared. E.g. we could implement an EQUAL hash table mapping from types to compiled type tests, and save the appropriate compiled type test as part of each lexical closure; or we could make the lexical closures be placeholders which overwrite their old definition as a lexical closure with a new compiled definition the first time that they're called.) As a workaround for the problem, #'(SETF FOO) expressions can be replaced with (EFFICIENT-SETF-FUNCTION FOO), where (defmacro efficient-setf-function (place-function-name) (or #+sbcl (and (sb-impl::info :function :accessor-for place-function-name) ;; a workaround for the problem, encouraging the ;; inline expansion of the structure accessor, so ;; that the compiler can optimize its type test (let ((new-value (gensym "NEW-VALUE-")) (structure-value (gensym "STRUCTURE-VALUE-"))) `(lambda (,new-value ,structure-value) (setf (,place-function-name ,structure-value) ,new-value)))) ;; no problem, can just use the ordinary expansion `(function (setf ,place-function-name)))) 100: There's apparently a bug in CEILING optimization which caused Douglas Crosher to patch the CMU CL version. Martin Atzmueller applied the patches to SBCL and they didn't seem to cause problems (as reported sbcl-devel 2001-05-04). However, since the patches modify nontrivial code which was apparently written incorrectly the first time around, until regression tests are written I'm not comfortable merging the patches in the CVS version of SBCL. 108: (TIME (ROOM T)) reports more than 200 Mbytes consed even for a clean, just-started SBCL system. And it seems to be right: (ROOM T) can bring a small computer to its knees for a *long* time trying to GC afterwards. Surely there's some more economical way to implement (ROOM T). 117: When the compiler inline expands functions, it may be that different kinds of return values are generated from different code branches. E.g. an inline expansion of POSITION generates integer results from one branch, and NIL results from another. When that inline expansion is used in a context where only one of those results is acceptable, e.g. (defun foo (x) (aref *a1* (position x *a2*))) and the compiler can't prove that the unacceptable branch is never taken, then bogus type mismatch warnings can be generated. If you need to suppress the type mismatch warnings, you can suppress the inline expansion, (defun foo (x) #+sbcl (declare (notinline position)) ; to suppress bug 117 bogowarnings (aref *a1* (position x *a2*))) or, sometimes, suppress them by declaring the result to be of an appropriate type, (defun foo (x) (aref *a1* (the integer (position x *a2*)))) This is not a new compiler problem in 0.7.0, but the new compiler transforms for FIND, POSITION, FIND-IF, and POSITION-IF make it more conspicuous. If you don't need performance from these functions, and the bogus warnings are a nuisance for you, you can return to your pre-0.7.0 state of grace with #+sbcl (declaim (notinline find position find-if position-if)) ; bug 117.. 118: as reported by Eric Marsden on cmucl-imp@cons.org 2001-08-14: (= (FLOAT 1 DOUBLE-FLOAT-EPSILON) (+ (FLOAT 1 DOUBLE-FLOAT-EPSILON) DOUBLE-FLOAT-EPSILON)) => T when of course it should be NIL. (He says it only fails for X86, not SPARC; dunno about Alpha.) Also, "the same problem exists for LONG-FLOAT-EPSILON, DOUBLE-FLOAT-NEGATIVE-EPSILON, LONG-FLOAT-NEGATIVE-EPSILON (though for the -negative- the + is replaced by a - in the test)." Raymond Toy comments that this is tricky on the X86 since its FPU uses 80-bit precision internally. 120b: Even in sbcl-0.pre7.x, which is supposed to be free of the old non-ANSI behavior of treating the function return type inferred from the current function definition as a declaration of the return type from any function of that name, the return type of NIL is attached to FOO in 120a above, and used to optimize code which calls FOO. 124: As of version 0.pre7.14, SBCL's implementation of MACROLET makes the entire lexical environment at the point of MACROLET available in the bodies of the macroexpander functions. In particular, it allows the function bodies (which run at compile time) to try to access lexical variables (which are only defined at runtime). It doesn't even issue a warning, which is bad. The SBCL behavior arguably conforms to the ANSI spec (since the spec says that the behavior is undefined, ergo anything conforms). However, it would be better to issue a compile-time error. Unfortunately I (WHN) don't see any simple way to detect this condition in order to issue such an error, so for the meantime SBCL just does this weird broken "conforming" thing. The ANSI standard says, in the definition of the special operator MACROLET, The macro-expansion functions defined by MACROLET are defined in the lexical environment in which the MACROLET form appears. Declarations and MACROLET and SYMBOL-MACROLET definitions affect the local macro definitions in a MACROLET, but the consequences are undefined if the local macro definitions reference any local variable or function bindings that are visible in that lexical environment. Then it seems to contradict itself by giving the example (defun foo (x flag) (macrolet ((fudge (z) ;The parameters x and flag are not accessible ; at this point; a reference to flag would be to ; the global variable of that name. ` (if flag (* ,z ,z) ,z))) ;The parameters x and flag are accessible here. (+ x (fudge x) (fudge (+ x 1))))) The comment "a reference to flag would be to the global variable of the same name" sounds like good behavior for the system to have. but actual specification quoted above says that the actual behavior is undefined. (Since 0.7.8.23 macroexpanders are defined in a restricted version of the lexical environment, containing no lexical variables and functions, which seems to conform to ANSI and CLtL2, but signalling a STYLE-WARNING for references to variables similar to locals might be a good thing.) 125: (as reported by Gabe Garza on cmucl-help 2001-09-21) (defvar *tmp* 3) (defun test-pred (x y) (eq x y)) (defun test-case () (let* ((x *tmp*) (func (lambda () x))) (print (eq func func)) (print (test-pred func func)) (delete func (list func)))) Now calling (TEST-CASE) gives output NIL NIL (#) Evidently Python thinks of the lambda as a code transformation so much that it forgets that it's also an object. 135: Ideally, uninterning a symbol would allow it, and its associated FDEFINITION and PROCLAIM data, to be reclaimed by the GC. However, at least as of sbcl-0.7.0, this isn't the case. Information about FDEFINITIONs and PROCLAIMed properties is stored in globaldb.lisp essentially in ordinary (non-weak) hash tables keyed by symbols. Thus, once a system has an entry in this system, it tends to live forever, even when it is uninterned and all other references to it are lost. 141: "pretty printing and backquote" a. * '``(FOO ,@',@S) ``(FOO SB-IMPL::BACKQ-COMMA-AT S) b. * (write '`(, .ala.) :readably t :pretty t) `(,.ALA.) (note the space between the comma and the point) 143: (reported by Jesse Bouwman 2001-10-24 through the unfortunately prominent SourceForge web/db bug tracking system, which is unfortunately not a reliable way to get a timely response from the SBCL maintainers) In the course of trying to build a test case for an application error, I encountered this behavior: If you start up sbcl, and then lay on CTRL-C for a minute or two, the lisp process will eventually say: %PRIMITIVE HALT called; the party is over. and throw you into the monitor. If I start up lisp, attach to the process with strace, and then do the same (abusive) thing, I get instead: access failure in heap page not marked as write-protected and the monitor again. I don't know enough to have the faintest idea of what is going on here. This is with sbcl 6.12, uname -a reports: Linux prep 2.2.19 #4 SMP Tue Apr 24 13:59:52 CDT 2001 i686 unknown I (WHN) have verified that the same thing occurs on sbcl-0.pre7.141 under OpenBSD 2.9 on my X86 laptop. Do be patient when you try it: it took more than two minutes (but less than five) for me. 144: (This was once known as IR1-4, but it lived on even after the IR1 interpreter went to the big bit bucket in the sky.) The system accepts DECLAIM in most places where DECLARE would be accepted, without even issuing a warning. ANSI allows this, but since it's fairly easy to mistype DECLAIM instead of DECLARE, and the meaning is rather different, and it's unlikely that the user has a good reason for doing DECLAIM not at top level, it would be good to issue a STYLE-WARNING when this happens. A possible fix would be to issue STYLE-WARNINGs for DECLAIMs not at top level, or perhaps to issue STYLE-WARNINGs for any EVAL-WHEN not at top level. [This is considered an IR1-interpreter-related bug because until EVAL-WHEN is rewritten, which won't happen until after the IR1 interpreter is gone, the system's notion of what's a top-level form and what's not will remain too confused to fix this problem.] 145: ANSI allows types `(COMPLEX ,FOO) to use very hairy values for FOO, e.g. (COMPLEX (AND REAL (SATISFIES ODDP))). The old CMU CL COMPLEX implementation didn't deal with this, and hasn't been upgraded to do so. (This doesn't seem to be a high priority conformance problem, since seems hard to construct useful code where it matters.) 146: Floating point errors are reported poorly. E.g. on x86 OpenBSD with sbcl-0.7.1, * (expt 2.0 12777) debugger invoked on condition of type SB-KERNEL:FLOATING-POINT-EXCEPTION: An arithmetic error SB-KERNEL:FLOATING-POINT-EXCEPTION was signalled. No traps are enabled? How can this be? It should be possible to be much more specific (overflow, division by zero, etc.) and of course the "How can this be?" should be fixable. See also bugs #45.c and #183 148: In sbcl-0.7.1.3 on x86, COMPILE-FILE on the file (in-package :cl-user) (defvar *thing*) (defvar *zoom*) (defstruct foo bar bletch) (defun %zeep () (labels ((kidify1 (kid) ) (kid-frob (kid) (if *thing* (setf sweptm (m+ (frobnicate kid) sweptm)) (kidify1 kid)))) (declare (inline kid-frob)) (map nil #'kid-frob (the simple-vector (foo-bar perd))))) fails with debugger invoked on condition of type TYPE-ERROR: The value NIL is not of type SB-C::NODE. The location of this failure has moved around as various related issues were cleaned up. As of sbcl-0.7.1.9, it occurs in NODE-BLOCK called by LAMBDA-COMPONENT called by IR2-CONVERT-CLOSURE. (Python LET-converts KIDIFY1 into KID-FROB, then tries to inline expand KID-FROB into %ZEEP. Having partially done it, it sees a call of KIDIFY1, which already does not exist. So it gives up on expansion, leaving garbage consisting of infinished blocks of the partially converted function.) 162: (reported by Robert E. Brown 2002-04-16) When a function is called with too few arguments, causing the debugger to be entered, the uninitialized slots in the bad call frame seem to cause GCish problems, being interpreted as tagged data even though they're not. In particular, executing ROOM in the debugger at that point causes AVER failures: * (machine-type) "X86" * (lisp-implementation-version) "0.7.2.12" * (typep 10) ... 0] (room) ... failed AVER: "(SAP= CURRENT END)" (Christophe Rhodes reports that this doesn't occur on the SPARC, which isn't too surprising since there are many differences in stack implementation and GC conservatism between the X86 and other ports.) 167: In sbcl-0.7.3.11, compiling the (illegal) code (in-package :cl-user) (defmethod prove ((uustk uustk)) (zap ((frob () nil)) (frob))) gives the (not terribly clear) error message ; caught ERROR: ; (during macroexpansion of (DEFMETHOD PROVE ...)) ; can't get template for (FROB NIL NIL) The problem seems to be that the code walker used by the DEFMETHOD macro is unhappy with the illegal syntax in the method body, and is giving an unclear error message. 173: The compiler sometimes tries to constant-fold expressions before it checks to see whether they can be reached. This can lead to bogus warnings about errors in the constant folding, e.g. in code like (WHEN X (WRITE-STRING (> X 0) "+" "0")) compiled in a context where the compiler can prove that X is NIL, and the compiler complains that (> X 0) causes a type error because NIL isn't a valid argument to #'>. Until sbcl-0.7.4.10 or so this caused a full WARNING, which made the bug really annoying because then COMPILE and COMPILE-FILE returned FAILURE-P=T for perfectly legal code. Since then the warning has been downgraded to STYLE-WARNING, so it's still a bug but at least it's a little less annoying. 183: "IEEE floating point issues" Even where floating point handling is being dealt with relatively well (as of sbcl-0.7.5, on sparc/sunos and alpha; see bug #146), the accrued-exceptions and current-exceptions part of the fp control word don't seem to bear much relation to reality. E.g. on SPARC/SunOS: * (/ 1.0 0.0) debugger invoked on condition of type DIVISION-BY-ZERO: arithmetic error DIVISION-BY-ZERO signalled 0] (sb-vm::get-floating-point-modes) (:TRAPS (:OVERFLOW :INVALID :DIVIDE-BY-ZERO) :ROUNDING-MODE :NEAREST :CURRENT-EXCEPTIONS NIL :ACCRUED-EXCEPTIONS (:INEXACT) :FAST-MODE NIL) 0] abort * (sb-vm::get-floating-point-modes) (:TRAPS (:OVERFLOW :INVALID :DIVIDE-BY-ZERO) :ROUNDING-MODE :NEAREST :CURRENT-EXCEPTIONS (:INEXACT) :ACCRUED-EXCEPTIONS (:INEXACT) :FAST-MODE NIL) 187: "type inference confusion around DEFTRANSFORM time" (reported even more verbosely on sbcl-devel 2002-06-28 as "strange bug in DEFTRANSFORM") After the file below is compiled and loaded in sbcl-0.7.5, executing (TCX (MAKE-ARRAY 4 :FILL-POINTER 2) 0) at the REPL returns an adjustable vector, which is wrong. Presumably somehow the DERIVE-TYPE information for the output values of %WAD is being mispropagated as a type constraint on the input values of %WAD, and so causing the type test to be optimized away. It's unclear how hand-expanding the DEFTRANSFORM would change this, but it suggests the DEFTRANSFORM machinery (or at least the way DEFTRANSFORMs are invoked at a particular phase) is involved. (cl:in-package :sb-c) (eval-when (:compile-toplevel) ;;; standin for %DATA-VECTOR-AND-INDEX (defknown %dvai (array index) (values t t) (foldable flushable)) (deftransform %dvai ((array index) (vector t) * :important t) (let* ((atype (continuation-type array)) (eltype (array-type-specialized-element-type atype))) (when (eq eltype *wild-type*) (give-up-ir1-transform "specialized array element type not known at compile-time")) (when (not (array-type-complexp atype)) (give-up-ir1-transform "SIMPLE array!")) `(if (array-header-p array) (%wad array index nil) (values array index)))) ;;; standin for %WITH-ARRAY-DATA (defknown %wad (array index (or index null)) (values (simple-array * (*)) index index index) (foldable flushable)) ;;; (Commenting out this optimizer causes the bug to go away.) (defoptimizer (%wad derive-type) ((array start end)) (let ((atype (continuation-type array))) (when (array-type-p atype) (values-specifier-type `(values (simple-array ,(type-specifier (array-type-specialized-element-type atype)) (*)) index index index))))) ) ; EVAL-WHEN (defun %wad (array start end) (format t "~&in %WAD~%") (%with-array-data array start end)) (cl:in-package :cl-user) (defun tcx (v i) (declare (type (vector t) v)) (declare (notinline sb-kernel::%with-array-data)) ;; (Hand-expending DEFTRANSFORM %DVAI here also causes the bug to ;; go away.) (sb-c::%dvai v i)) 188: "compiler performance fiasco involving type inference and UNION-TYPE" (In sbcl-0.7.6.10, DEFTRANSFORM CONCATENATE was commented out until this bug could be fixed properly, so you won't see the bug unless you restore the DEFTRANSFORM by hand.) In sbcl-0.7.5.11 on a 700 MHz Pentium III, (time (compile nil '(lambda () (declare (optimize (safety 3))) (declare (optimize (compilation-speed 2))) (declare (optimize (speed 1) (debug 1) (space 1))) (let ((fn "if-this-file-exists-the-universe-is-strange")) (load fn :if-does-not-exist nil) (load (concatenate 'string fn ".lisp") :if-does-not-exist nil) (load (concatenate 'string fn ".fasl") :if-does-not-exist nil) (load (concatenate 'string fn ".misc-garbage") :if-does-not-exist nil))))) reports 134.552 seconds of real time 133.35156 seconds of user run time 0.03125 seconds of system run time [Run times include 2.787 seconds GC run time.] 0 page faults and 246883368 bytes consed. BACKTRACE from Ctrl-C in the compilation shows that the compiler is thinking about type relationships involving types like #)[:EXTERNAL] 190: "PPC/Linux pipe? buffer? bug" In sbcl-0.7.6, the run-program.test.sh test script sometimes hangs on the PPC/Linux platform, waiting for a zombie env process. This is a classic symptom of buffer filling and deadlock, but it seems only sporadically reproducible. 191: "Miscellaneous PCL deficiencies" (reported by Alexey Dejneka sbcl-devel 2002-08-04) a. DEFCLASS does not inform the compiler about generated functions. Compiling a file with (DEFCLASS A-CLASS () ((A-CLASS-X))) (DEFUN A-CLASS-X (A) (WITH-SLOTS (A-CLASS-X) A A-CLASS-X)) results in a STYLE-WARNING: undefined-function SB-SLOT-ACCESSOR-NAME::|COMMON-LISP-USER A-CLASS-X slot READER| APD's fix for this was checked in to sbcl-0.7.6.20, but Pierre Mai points out that the declamation of functions is in fact incorrect in some cases (most notably for structure classes). This means that at present erroneous attempts to use WITH-SLOTS and the like on classes with metaclass STRUCTURE-CLASS won't get the corresponding STYLE-WARNING. c. the examples in CLHS 7.6.5.1 (regarding generic function lambda lists and &KEY arguments) do not signal errors when they should. 192: "Python treats free type declarations as promises." b. What seemed like the same fundamental problem as bug 192a, but was not fixed by the same (APD "more strict type checking sbcl-devel 2002-08-97) patch: (DOTIMES (I ...) (DOTIMES (J ...) (DECLARE ...) ...)): (declaim (optimize (speed 1) (safety 3))) (defun trust-assertion (i) (dotimes (j i) (declare (type (mod 4) i)) ; when commented out, behavior changes! (unless (< i 5) (print j)))) (trust-assertion 6) ; prints nothing unless DECLARE is commented out (see bug 203) c. (defun foo (x y) (locally (declare (type fixnum x y)) (+ x (* 2 y)))) (foo 1.1 2) => 5.1 194: "no error from (THE REAL '(1 2 3)) in some cases" fixed parts: a. In sbcl-0.7.7.9, (multiple-value-prog1 (progn (the real '(1 2 3)))) returns (1 2 3) instead of signalling an error. This was fixed by APD's "more strict type checking patch", but although the fixed code (in sbcl-0.7.7.19) works (signals TYPE-ERROR) interactively, it's difficult to write a regression test for it, because (IGNORE-ERRORS (MULTIPLE-VALUE-PROG1 (PROGN (THE REAL '(1 2 3))))) still returns (1 2 3). still-broken parts: b. (IGNORE-ERRORS (MULTIPLE-VALUE-PROG1 (PROGN (THE REAL '(1 2 3))))) returns (1 2 3). (As above, this shows up when writing regression tests for fixed-ness of part a.) c. Also in sbcl-0.7.7.9, (IGNORE-ERRORS (THE REAL '(1 2 3))) => (1 2 3). d. At the REPL, (null (ignore-errors (let ((arg1 1) (arg2 (identity (the real #(1 2 3))))) (if (< arg1 arg2) arg1 arg2)))) => T but putting the same expression inside (DEFUN FOO () ...), (FOO) => NIL. notes: * Actually this entry is probably multiple bugs, as Alexey Dejneka commented on sbcl-devel 2002-09-03:) I don't think that placing these two bugs in one entry is a good idea: they have different explanations. The second (min 1 nil) is caused by flushing of unused code--IDENTITY can do nothing with it. So it is really bug 122. The first (min nil) is due to M-V-PROG1: substituting a continuation for the result, it forgets about type assertion. The purpose of IDENTITY is to save the restricted continuation from inaccurate transformations. * Alexey Dejneka pointed out that (IGNORE-ERRORS (IDENTITY (THE REAL '(1 2 3)))) and (IGNORE-ERRORS (VALUES (THE REAL '(1 2 3)))) work as they should. 201: "Incautious type inference from compound CONS types" (reported by APD sbcl-devel 2002-09-17) (DEFUN FOO (X) (LET ((Y (CAR (THE (CONS INTEGER *) X)))) (SETF (CAR X) NIL) (FORMAT NIL "~S IS ~S, Y = ~S" (CAR X) (TYPECASE (CAR X) (INTEGER 'INTEGER) (T '(NOT INTEGER))) Y))) (FOO ' (1 . 2)) => "NIL IS INTEGER, Y = 1" 203: Compiler does not check THEs on unused values, e.g. in (progn (the real (list 1)) t) This situation may appear during optimizing away degenerate cases of certain functions: see bug 192b. 205: "environment issues in cross compiler" (These bugs have no impact on user code, but should be fixed or documented.) a. Macroexpanders introduced with MACROLET are defined in the null lexical environment. b. The body of (EVAL-WHEN (:COMPILE-TOPLEVEL) ...) is evaluated in the null lexical environment. c. The cross-compiler cannot inline functions defined in a non-null lexical environment. 206: ":SB-FLUID feature broken" (reported by Antonio Martinez-Shotton sbcl-devel 2002-10-07) Enabling :SB-FLUID in the target-features list in sbcl-0.7.8 breaks the build. 207: "poorly distributed SXHASH results for compound data" SBCL's SXHASH could probably try a little harder. ANSI: "the intent is that an implementation should make a good-faith effort to produce hash-codes that are well distributed within the range of non-negative fixnums". But (let ((hits (make-hash-table))) (dotimes (i 16) (dotimes (j 16) (let* ((ij (cons i j)) (newlist (push ij (gethash (sxhash ij) hits)))) (when (cdr newlist) (format t "~&collision: ~S~%" newlist)))))) reports lots of collisions in sbcl-0.7.8. A stronger MIX function would be an obvious way of fix. Maybe it would be acceptably efficient to redo MIX using a lookup into a 256-entry s-box containing 29-bit pseudorandom numbers? 208: "package confusion in PCL handling of structure slot handlers" In sbcl-0.7.8 compiling and loading (in-package :cl) (defstruct foo (slot (error "missing")) :type list :read-only t) (defmethod print-object ((foo foo) stream) (print nil stream)) causes CERROR "attempting to modify a symbol in the COMMON-LISP package: FOO-SLOT". (This is fairly bad code, but still it's hard to see that it should cause symbols to be interned in the CL package.) 211: "keywords processing" a. :ALLOW-OTHER-KEYS T should allow a function to receive an odd number of keyword arguments. e. Compiling (flet ((foo (&key y) (list y))) (list (foo :y 1 :y 2))) issues confusing message ; in: LAMBDA NIL ; (FOO :Y 1 :Y 2) ; ; caught STYLE-WARNING: ; The variable #:G15 is defined but never used. 212: "Sequence functions and circular arguments" COERCE, MERGE and CONCATENATE go into an infinite loop when given circular arguments; it would be good for the user if they could be given an error instead (ANSI 17.1.1 allows this behaviour on the part of the implementation, as conforming code cannot give non-proper sequences to these functions. MAP also has this problem (and solution), though arguably the convenience of being able to do (MAP 'LIST '+ FOO '#1=(1 . #1#)) might be classed as more important (though signalling an error when all of the arguments are circular is probably desireable). 213: "Sequence functions and type checking" a. MAKE-SEQUENCE, COERCE, MERGE and CONCATENATE cannot deal with various complicated, though recognizeable, CONS types [e.g. (CONS * (CONS * NULL)) which according to ANSI should be recognized] (and, in SAFETY 3 code, should return a list of LENGTH 2 or signal an error) b. MAP, when given a type argument that is SUBTYPEP LIST, does not check that it will return a sequence of the given type. Fixing it along the same lines as the others (cf. work done around sbcl-0.7.8.45) is possible, but doing so efficiently didn't look entirely straightforward. c. All of these functions will silently accept a type of the form (CONS INTEGER *) whether or not the return value is of this type. This is probably permitted by ANSI (see "Exceptional Situations" under ANSI MAKE-SEQUENCE), but the DERIVE-TYPE mechanism does not know about this escape clause, so code of the form (INTEGERP (CAR (MAKE-SEQUENCE '(CONS INTEGER *) 2))) can erroneously return T. 214: SBCL 0.6.12.43 fails to compile (locally (declare (optimize (inhibit-warnings 0) (compilation-speed 2))) (flet ((foo (&key (x :vx x-p)) (list x x-p))) (foo 1 2))) or a more simple example: (locally (declare (optimize (inhibit-warnings 0) (compilation-speed 2))) (lambda (x) (declare (fixnum x)) (if (< x 0) 0 (1- x)))) 215: ":TEST-NOT handling by functions" a. FIND and POSITION currently signal errors when given non-NIL for both their :TEST and (deprecated) :TEST-NOT arguments, but by ANSI 17.2 "the consequences are unspecified", which by ANSI 1.4.2 means that the effect is "unpredictable but harmless". It's not clear what that actually means; it may preclude conforming implementations from signalling errors. b. COUNT, REMOVE and the like give priority to a :TEST-NOT argument when conflict occurs. As a quality of implementation issue, it might be preferable to treat :TEST and :TEST-NOT as being in some sense the same &KEY, and effectively take the first test function in the argument list. c. Again, a quality of implementation issue: it would be good to issue a STYLE-WARNING at compile-time for calls with :TEST-NOT, and a WARNING for calls with both :TEST and :TEST-NOT; possibly this latter should be WARNed about at execute-time too. 216: "debugger confused by frames with invalid number of arguments" In sbcl-0.7.8.51, executing e.g. (VECTOR-PUSH-EXTEND T), BACKTRACE, Q leaves the system confused, enough so that (QUIT) no longer works. It's as though the process of working with the uninitialized slot in the bad VECTOR-PUSH-EXTEND frame causes GC problems, though that may not be the actual problem. (CMU CL 18c doesn't have problems with this.) 217: "Bad type operations with FUNCTION types" In sbcl.0.7.7: * (values-type-union (specifier-type '(function (base-char))) (specifier-type '(function (integer)))) # It causes insertion of wrong type assertions into generated code. E.g. (defun foo (x s) (let ((f (etypecase x (character #'write-char) (integer #'write-byte)))) (funcall f x s) (etypecase x (character (write-char x s)) (integer (write-byte x s))))) Then (FOO #\1 *STANDARD-OUTPUT*) signals type error. (In 0.7.9.1 the result type is (FUNCTION * *), so Python does not produce invalid code, but type checking is not accurate. Similar problems exist with VALUES-TYPE-INTERSECTION.) 218: "VALUES type specifier semantics" (THE (VALUES ...) ...) in safe code discards extra values. (defun test (x y) (the (values integer) (truncate x y))) (test 10 4) => 2 220: Sbcl 0.7.9 fails to compile (multiple-value-call #'list (the integer (helper)) nil) Type check for INTEGER, the result of which serves as the first argument of M-V-C, is inserted after evaluation of NIL. So arguments of M-V-C are pushed in the wrong order. As a temporary workaround type checking was disabled for M-V-Cs in 0.7.9.13. A better solution would be to put the check between evaluation of arguments, but it could be tricky to check result types of PROG1, IF etc. 229: (subtypep 'function '(function)) => nil, t. 231: "SETQ does not correctly check the type of a variable being set" b. (defun foo (x z) (declare (type integer x)) (locally (declare (type (real 1) x)) (setq x z)) (list x z)) (foo 0 0) => (0 0). (fixed in 0.7.12.8) 233: bugs in constraint propagation a. (defun foo (x) (declare (optimize (speed 2) (safety 3))) (let ((y 0d0)) (values (the double-float x) (setq y (+ x 1d0)) (setq x 3d0) (quux y (+ y 2d0) (* y 3d0))))) (foo 4) => segmentation violation (see usage of CONTINUATION-ASSERTED-TYPE in USE-RESULT-CONSTRAINTS) (see also bug 236) b. (declaim (optimize (speed 2) (safety 3))) (defun foo (x y) (if (typep (prog1 x (setq x y)) 'double-float) (+ x 1d0) (+ x 2))) (foo 1d0 5) => segmentation violation 234: (fixed in sbcl-0.7.10.36) 235: "type system and inline expansion" a. (declaim (ftype (function (cons) number) acc)) (declaim (inline acc)) (defun acc (c) (the number (car c))) (defun foo (x y) (values (locally (declare (optimize (safety 0))) (acc x)) (locally (declare (optimize (safety 3))) (acc y)))) (foo '(nil) '(t)) => NIL, T. b. (reported by brown on #lisp 2003-01-21) (defun find-it (x) (declare (optimize (speed 3) (safety 0))) (declare (notinline mapcar)) (let ((z (mapcar #'car x))) (find 'foobar z))) Without (DECLARE (NOTINLINE MAPCAR)), Python cannot derive that Z is LIST. 236: "THE semantics is broken" (defun foo (a f) (declare (optimize (speed 2) (safety 0))) (+ 1d0 (the double-float (multiple-value-prog1 (svref a 0) (unless f (return-from foo 0)))))) (foo #(4) nil) => SEGV VOP selection thinks that in unsafe code result type assertions should be valid immediately. (See also bug 233a.) The similar problem exists for TRULY-THE. 237: "Environment arguments to type functions" a. Functions SUBTYPEP, TYPEP, UPGRADED-ARRAY-ELEMENT-TYPE, and UPGRADED-COMPLEX-PART-TYPE now have an optional environment argument, but they ignore it completely. This is almost certainly not correct. b. Also, the compiler's optimizers for TYPEP have not been informed about the new argument; consequently, they will not transform calls of the form (TYPEP 1 'INTEGER NIL), even though this is just as optimizeable as (TYPEP 1 'INTEGER). 238: "REPL compiler overenthusiasm for CLOS code" From the REPL, * (defclass foo () ()) * (defmethod bar ((x foo) (foo foo)) (call-next-method)) causes approximately 100 lines of code deletion notes. Some discussion on this issue happened under the title 'Three "interesting" bugs in PCL', resulting in a fix for this oververbosity from the compiler proper; however, the problem persists in the interactor because the notion of original source is not preserved: for the compiler, the original source of the above expression is (DEFMETHOD BAR ((X FOO) (FOO FOO)) (CALL-NEXT-METHOD)), while by the time the compiler gets its hands on the code needing compilation from the REPL, it has been macroexpanded several times. 239: Since 0.7.0: (defun foo (bit-array-2 &optional result-bit-array) (declare (type (array bit) bit-array-2) (type (or (array bit) (member t nil)) result-bit-array)) (unless (simple-bit-vector-p bit-array-2) (multiple-value-call (lambda (data1 start1) (multiple-value-call (lambda (data2 start2) (multiple-value-call (lambda (data3 start3) (declare (ignore start3)) (print (list data1 data2))) (values 0 0))) (values bit-array-2 0))) (values 444 0)))) Then (foo (make-array 4 :element-type 'bit :adjustable t) nil) must return the same value as it prints, but it returns random garbage. DEFUNCT CATEGORIES OF BUGS IR1-#: These labels were used for bugs related to the old IR1 interpreter. The # values reached 6 before the category was closed down.