On 25/02/2015 16:04, Peter Otten wrote:
Sturla Molden wrote:
On 24/02/15 22:34, Roy Smith wrote:
http://envisage-project.eu/proving-android-java-and-python-sorting-algorithm-is-broken-and-how-to-fix-it/
This is awful. It is broken for arrays longer than 2**49 elements. With
8 bytes per PyObject* pointer this is >4096 terabytes of RAM. I don't
see how we can fix this in time.
Oh yes, and they mention that TimSort is used on billions of devices due
to Android mobile phones. This is clearly very relevant for mobile
phones. Next thing you know your litte Samsung Galaxy with more than
4096 terabytes breaks down from a stack overflow in TimSort.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to see comparable bugs being closed as "cannot
reproduce" by some of the jokers. I suppose that you all had a note
scribbled on the margin of your copy of Arithmetica that this cannot happen
with arrays of lengths seen in practice until 2038 or so.
These guys found a bug that is subtler than what most of us have dealt with
in a widely used piece of code originally developed by one of the smarter
members of the python "community".
I bow my head to them and say thank you.
Reading the bug report http://bugs.python.org/issue23515, specifically
msg236586, it looks as if the proposed fix was wrong and one of the
smarter members of the python community fixed it.
--
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask
what you can do for our language.
Mark Lawrence
--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
