gawk fatal error: internal error (SIGSEGV) 1

[sackie]

Hi

I get the following message when running a gawk program
"fatal error: internal error (SIGSEGV)

This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.
Please contact the application's support team for more information"

However, this problem seems to occur randomly. Sometimes the program runs successfully (in isolation), but if executed after another program, but with the same data, the error occurs.
Has anyone seen anything like this or got any suggestions for debugging?

Thanks
Sackie

 

[Annihilannic]

What version of gawk exactly, on what operating system and what architecture?

Is it processing massive amounts of data or very large arrays?

Is it always when used in the same script/job, or does it happen randomly regardless of what you are making it do?

Annihilannic.

 

[sackie]

Hi Annihilanic

Thanks for your response.
The gawk version is 3.1.6.2962
Operating system is XP (up to date), not sure what 'architecture' is but it fails on my Dell machine, about 3 years old, also on client's machine.
Yes it is processing large amounts of data with large arrays, further details could be provided if useful.
It only fails in one specific script, others are OK. I tried putting debug print statements in the program, and the script 'randomly' failed or ran depending on which print statements were included.
I have got round the problem by using a different awk compiler 'awk95', downloaded from:-

http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/bwk/awk95.exe

and this works OK. However it would be good to know what was causing the problem.
Thanks
Sackie

 

[Annihilannic]

It just sounds like a bug, probably introduced during the port to Win32. It'd be difficult to diagnose without knowledge of debugging. You may find that just getting another copy of gawk would resolve it, or as you found, another version completely has worked around the problem.

Incidentally, it's an awk "interpreter". awk is not a compiled language.

Annihilannic.

 

[sackie]

Hi

Thanks for your response.

I sort of knew that it was an "interpreter" (like BASIC), just forgot for the moment. I'll probably just carry on with awk95 until that causes me problems!

Regards.
Sackie