[erlang-bugs] Crash on attempted use of float_to_binary/2

[Steve Davis]

Hi Mikael,

It does rather sound like a coincidence, then - perhaps something else 
is going on with my machine. I'm sorry to have wasted your time 
unnecessarily.

BR,
/s


Mikael Pettersson wrote:
> Steve Davis writes:
>  > Hi,
>  > 
>  > During my learning process I was trying to convert floats to binary, I 
>  > inadvisedly tried the following:
>  > 
>  > to_binary(X) when is_float(X) -> erlang:float_to_binary(X, 64).
>  > 
>  > I do understand that this BIF has been removed, and it did throw an 
>  > expected "erlang:float_to_binary/2 not defined" error BUT within 20 
>  > seconds of running that code my PC "bluescreened" (for the first time in 
>  > over 3 years).
>  > 
>  > I am not at all certain it's reproducible but I don't want to risk 
>  > trying it again on my machine... but I do strongly suspect that the 
>  > underlying c code for this bif remains, and this caused the observed result.
>  > 
>  > System details:
>  > Erlang R12B-5/erts 5.6.5
>  > Windows XP SP3
>  > Acer Ferrari 3400 (a laptop)
> 
> I am unable to reproduce anything but the benign "not defined" error
> with R12B-5 on Solaris 9, MacOSX 10.3, and Windows XP 64 Professional.
> 
> There is no float_to_binary of any kind in R12B-5, the only reference
> to it is a documentation note that it has been removed.
> 
> A Windows bluescreen can happen due to any number of reasons, mostly
> hardware or kernel/driver bugs, but a bug in the Erlang VM should not
> be able to trigger it (that would in itself be a kernel bug).
> 
> IOW, I think this is pure coincidence.
>