[seqfan] Re: Advice for creators of b-files

[Fred Lunnon]

  It's a valid point (for those of us sufficiently well-organised!);
though I always find myself wondering "where should one stop"?
Even the CPUs executing your program might incur bugs or mods ...

WFL



On 3/9/19, Neil Sloane <njasloane at gmail.com> wrote:
> I discovered a Pari program from 2014/2018 that would not run on my 2015
> Pari complier.
> Antti helped me solve the problem.  Now read on:
>
> On 3/9/19, Neil Sloane <njasloane at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Antti,
>>
>> Of course I considered that possibility.  But 2015 is not very old!
>> OK, I will upgrade my Pari.  Thank you very much for helping.
>> But imagine if you got into a 2015 car, and it would not start
>
> Or wouldn't work with 2019 brand gasoline!
>
> But that's the problem with most of the programming languages! Many of
> them also have habit of "deprecating" big parts of themselves a few
> years after.
>
> This is one of the reason I add to each b-file I submit this "standard
> preamble":
>
> # Computed 2019-MM-DD in GP/PARI CALCULATOR Version 2.9.4 (released)
> amd64 running linux (x86-64/GMP-6.1.2 kernel) 64-bit version,
> compiled: Dec 19 2017, gcc version 7.3.0 (Ubuntu 7.3.0-1ubuntu1),
> threading engine: pthread
> # with the following program:
> #
> # Axxxxxx(n) = {my program code};
> # and the terms:
> 1 1
> 2 5
> etc.
>
> So, if somebody later finds the data incorrect in some terms, and it
> is not a simple mistake in my code, but something intricate in some of
> the PARI-functions, then it might even be possible to find all the
> same mistakes from other b-files also (provided they have information
> about the version number of PARI, or mutatis mutandis, Mathematica or
> Maple).
>
> Me:  I think this is an excellent idea if you are using anything more than
> the most basic Pari (or Maple, MMA, etc) commands.
>
> Start the b-file with a comment saying what version of what software it was
> created with.
>
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>