[Rd] qbeta function (FYI, compiler bug)

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> "Morten" == Morten Welinder <terra@diku.dk> writes:

    >> this is just to let you know that the qbeta function,
    >> which was copied from R into Gnumeric, has been confirmed
    >> to be miscompiled by gcc 2.96 on Linux.  (That's Red
    >> Hat's compiler.)

    Morten>    Which version? The ones in RH 7.1 and later has
    Morten> seemed to be quite solid [...]

    Morten> The problem is seen with "gcc version 2.96 20000731
    Morten> (Red Hat Linux 7.1 2.96-98)".  That would appear to
    Morten> be newer than yours.

    Morten>    0.64 is 2.5 years old!  Several things have been
    Morten> fixed since then, [...]

    Morten> Ahem, :-) I did look at some point and nothing much

if you measure "much" in percentage of changed source code. 
Sometimes a bug is fixed by replacing "<" with "<=" etc... which
is not ``much'' .. :-)
Really, please don't use anything <= R 1.0; and indeed, since
you should upgrade anyway, please use the current 1.4.0.

    Morten> had changed.  I've put it on my todo list to have a
    Morten> look.  (We might switch to GSL since that has more
    Morten> code that we would like to offload from our backs.
    Morten> Also, the packing seems to be nicer.  On the other
    Morten> hand, I have no idea of how reliable it is.)

Well, without wanting to brag, it still must be said:
The things we do with distributions, we do **much** better than
the GSL (which has quite a wider scope of numerical analysis
than we do), at least for the few cases I looked at.

Martin Maechler <maechler@stat.math.ethz.ch>	http://stat.ethz.ch/~maechler/
Seminar fuer Statistik, ETH-Zentrum  LEO C16	Leonhardstr. 27
ETH (Federal Inst. Technology)	8092 Zurich	SWITZERLAND
phone: x-41-1-632-3408		fax: ...-1228			<><
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
r-devel mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe"
(in the "body", not the subject !)  To: r-devel-request@stat.math.ethz.ch
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._