Package: bc
Version: 1.06.95-4
Severity: normal
Dear Maintainer,
The following example illustrates the problem:
~$ bc -l
bc 1.06.95
Copyright 1991-1994, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006 Free Software
Foundation, Inc.
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details type `warranty'.
e(l(-1))
Runtime warning (func=e, adr=123): scale too large, set to 2147483647
Fatal error: Out of memory for malloc.
I would have expected the l(-1) to cause a runtime error, since bc does
not support complex numbers. Part of the issue appears to be that l(-1)
produces the incorrect output -99999999999999999999. The bc calculator
then tries to exponentiate that large negative value and apparently fails
miserably for the task.
In summary, I would expect that:
(1) A domain error (e.g. an attempt to compute a logarithm from a
negative number) to be reported as such instead of bc producing invalid
output.
(2) The result of "e(-99999999999999999999)" to be reported as zero.
Note that the much larger value "e(-300)" is reported as zero.
(3) That bc does not run out of memory when calculating e(large negative
number).
Best,
--Lorenz
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.0
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (1000, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 3.6-trunk-rt-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Versions of packages bc depends on:
ii install-info 4.13a.dfsg.1-10
ii libc6 2.13-37
ii libncurses5 5.9-10
ii libreadline6 6.2+dfsg-0.1
ii libtinfo5 5.9-10
bc recommends no packages.
bc suggests no packages.
-- no debconf information
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