File Pro And Bus Errors

[J. Ryan Kelley]

Good Morning,

I've been working with Filepro for about 8 months now after recently 
graduating from college with a degree in Computer Science.  I've had 
experiences working with everything from C, and C++ to Fortran, to Lisp, 
and countless other languages, however never with FilePro until I 
started at my current position.  When I first started working with 
Filepro, I'll admit, I was impressed with how easy it was to step in and 
start working.  In fact, I was doing some programming in my first few 
hours on my first day.  The primary thing that I have found unsettling 
from day one, however, is the presence of the dreaded Bus Error.  I'm 
quite familiar with Bus Errors (aka Segmentation Faults) from my days 
working in C, where attempting to access a memory location you don't 
have permissions to access would cause this problem and dump you out.  
It was usually caused by an improperly indexed array, or an erroneous 
pointer.  This all made sense in C because of how low level it was, 
giving you direct access to the memory. 

Filepro, at least relative to C, is much more high level.  There is no 
point at which you are attempting to manipulate the system memory 
directly so these Bus Errors should cease to exist, unless being caused 
by a compiler/interpreter.  When I've questioned co-workers and other 
filepro developers in the past about what causes these errors, and how 
they can be avoided, I always get one reply, "Remove your comments."  
When I was first told this, I disputed it, and disputed it.  After all, 
in all (or at least i thought all) compilers/interpreters comments are 
completely disregarded and treated as if they were simply white space.  
Sadly, I have seen several instances in which removing some comments can 
remedy these errors.  In my opinion, comments are a very important part 
of the code itself, especially when working in a system with several 
developers who need to be able to easily digest what another programmer 
was attempting to do.  For a comment to attempt to access an 
unauthorized memory location is illogical, and I'm assuming that there 
is a better explanation for all of this.  As the days wear on, the bus 
errors seem to become more and more prevalent and are creating some 
serious issues that take me away from my daily duties.  Can anyone 
provide some helpful insight onto this problem, do comments really cause 
Bus Errors?  If So why and how?  Is there a patch in the works? and what 
else in FilePro can cause these nasty errors.

Thank you,

-- 
J. Ryan Kelley