The Clarion Magazine GPF Challenge

Posted March 14 2003

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This Clarion challenge is a bit different from those Clarion Magazine has run in the past. Normally, we'd be asking you to write some code that does something truly wonderful, probably using the minimum source code, and with an absolute excess of elegance and speed. But that's not what this challenge is about.

It's about GPFs. Tricky, nasty, hard to find GPFs. We want you to make them. And Russ Eggen, champion of the Clarion debugger, is going to track them down. See Russ's article on post mortem debugging in this issue.

To participate, you need to provide a complete application, which can be either an APP or a PRJ. Be sure to include all necessary source code, dictionaries, TPS files, whatever it takes to compile and run the application. And of course include some instructions on creating the GPF. You can be as tricky as you like in causing the GPF, as long as whatever you do involves the source.

Zip up your challenge and send it in. We'll award a six month subscription/renewal to the winner. Entries will be judged on the difficulty in finding and fixing the GPF, and the instruction value of the problem and solution (that is, you won't get as many points for coming up with a scenario that is virtually impossible to achieve under normal development conditions (is there such a thing?).