<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><span></span></div><div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-size: 15px;"><font face="Times New Roman">My somewhat ancient experience suggests that this is an excellent idea; C-Torture files have an uncanny ability to elicit interesting bugs even in an unrelated compiler. The eeriest one it elicited during testing of the PalmSource ARM compiler occurred at the same optimization level (O2) as in GCC, even though our optimization levels meant something completely different (they went all the way up to O5, rather than O3), and our back- and middle-ends were licensed from well-respected commercial vendors. (Details in my <i>Software: Practice and Experience</i> article [0].)</font></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-size: 15px;"><font face="Times New Roman"> One more painful piece of experience testing later compilers and languages: Be cautious, and remain calm, when updating to the latest third-party tests. Sometimes a clever and tricky new file, which elicited a bug now fixed in the target compiler, will also elicit a bug in yours. It’s easy to overreact to this, as though it’s a sudden regression, rather than an old problem newly revealed.</font></div><font face="Times New Roman" style="font-size: 15px;"><br>___</font><div style="font-size: 15px;"><font face="Times New Roman">[0] </font><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/spe.812/abstract">http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/spe.812/abstract</a>, </span></div><div style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">preprint at <a href="http://pobox.com/~flash/Practical_Testing_of_C99.pdf">http://pobox.com/~flash/Practical_Testing_of_C99.pdf</a>, </span></div><div style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">c</span><font face="Times New Roman">ompiler testing bibliography: <a href="http://pobox.com/~flash/compiler_testing_bibliography.html">http://pobox.com/~flash/compiler_testing_bibliography.html</a>.</font><br><font face="Times New Roman"><br></font><div>
<div class="ApplePlainTextBody" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><font face="Times New Roman">- - -<br>Flash Sheridan</font></div><div class="ApplePlainTextBody" style="text-align: start; text-indent: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Compiler Quality Assurance Lead at Axoni for AxLang (<a href="http://axoni.com/axlang">http://axoni.com/axlang</a></font><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">)</span></div><div class="ApplePlainTextBody" style="text-align: start; text-indent: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://pobox.com/~flash">http://pobox.com/~flash</a><br><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/flashsheridan">http://www.linkedin.com/in/flashsheridan</a><br></font></div>
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</div><div style="font-size: 15px;"><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br></div></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-size: 15px;"><font face="Times New Roman">We’re hiring, e.g. compiler engineer: <a href="https://jobs.lever.co/axoni/1356bb24-c82f-4a0f-a6f5-783d6a265d25?lever-via=9vamXsNUHv">https://jobs.lever.co/axoni/1356bb24-c82f-4a0f-a6f5-783d6a265d25?lever-via=9vamXsNUHv</a></font></div></div></body></html>