Re: Problems installing/using Python on Linux

Andrew KUCHLING (fnord@cs.mcgill.ca)
10 Jan 1995 17:39:08 GMT

In article <3erufj$p27@kernighan.cs.umass.edu> rochwerg@ovid.cs.umass.edu (Benny Rochwerger) writes:
>make test cause a segmentation fault. I noticed that this

This is a known problem, related to the behaviour of type
coercion. Simply, the 3-argument form of pow() can get confused and
wind up trying to free() a NULL pointer. This problem only affects
the 3-argument form of pow(). You can eliminate the core dumps at the
cost of breaking the garbage collection algorithm; e-mail me if you
want the tiny patch required. A true fix may require reworking the
way type coercion is handled. (Aieee! Yet another thing on my TODO
pile!)

>I also noticed a strange behavior while trying to use the 'getopts' module.

This is the fault of GNU getopt. A fix that works for me is to add '--'
to the first line to tell getopt to stop parsing. So, the fixed first
line would be:

> #! /usr/local/bin/python --

Andrew Kuchling
fnord@binkley.cs.mcgill.ca