Re: [gnugo-devel] gtp command `loadsgf' exits on parse error

[Gunnar Farnebäck]

Thi wrote:
> static void
> parse_error(const char *msg, int arg)
> {
>   fprintf(stderr, msg, arg);
>   fprintf(stderr, "\n");
>   exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
> }
> 
> that seems a bit harsh, and violates the gtp error-reporting
> convention of displaying "?" and continuing.  is someone looking
> into this?

Yes, this is bad. I took a look at it and it seems to be a fairly
serious design problem which will take some significant changes to
fix. I don't think we should try to do that before GNU Go 3.6 but it
certainly needs to be done. The patch below adds it as a TODO item.

/Gunnar

Index: TODO
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/gnugo/gnugo/TODO,v
retrieving revision 1.17
diff -u -r1.17 TODO
--- TODO        8 Sep 2004 17:03:41 -0000       1.17
+++ TODO        14 Nov 2004 20:10:13 -0000
@@ -46,6 +46,12 @@
 engine internals.  The issues are presented here in an approximate
 order of perceived difficulty.
 
+ * The function readsgffile() in sgf/sgfnode.c is responsible for
+   reading sgf files. Unfortunately it calls exit(EXIT_FAILURE), via
+   parse_error(), if the sgf file is misformed. This is inappropriate
+   in many cases and the code should be changed to return an exit code
+   instead of calling exit().
+
  * Add more checks in patterns/mkpat.c testing whether the main diagram and
    the constraint diagram are consistent.