[677] in SIPB bug reports
webster problems
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Mon Sep 25 14:33:25 1989
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 89 14:34:52 -0400
From: Jonathan I. Kamens <jik@Athena.MIT.EDU>
To: hacrat@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Cc: bug-sipb@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <hacrat@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>'s message of Sun, 24 Sep 89 21:46:56 -0400 <8909250146.AA11833@M14S-010-1.MIT.EDU>
From: <hacrat@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
Date: Sun, 24 Sep 89 21:46:56 -0400
Apparently there's an obscure bug in webster (/mit/sipb/vaxbin)
that appears only on a small number of words: An attempt to lookup
"surfactant" halts for a long time, and eventually returns the
message:
The webster server appears to be broken. Please try again, and if
it doesn't work, send mail to bug-sipb to let the SIPB know.
Other words appear to work fine; this problem has appeared
repeatedly.
Thx, NO
It is not an "obscure bug", not does it appear "only on a small
number of words". It will happen on certain long words which webster
does not have in its dictionary. The reason for this is that the
algorithm used by the webster daemon to check for words that are
spelled sort of like the word you asked for is a crock which eats up
time and CPU cycles and grows with the length of the word. For words
that the server doesn't know, it often takes longer than the RPC
timeout trying to figure out what the word is supposed to be, and the
client gives up.
It's a sure bet that if webster gives you that message on a long
word and then works correctly for another word, webster doesn't know
the word you asked for first.
Yes, this should be fixed, but it will take a long time to fix it,
or at least a while to figure out the best method to fix it, and I
haven't got the time right now.
jik
