Re: pbulk bootstrap: `awk` running into FP overflow during bison build (Grater picture: How to bootstrap pkgsrc / pbulk?)

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

>>> awk: floating point exception: Floating point overflow
>> It's a guess, but, this _could_ be an attempt to use a value like
>> 1.5e308, within range for IEEE 64-bit but well out of VAX D-float
>> range [...]
> I think it's more likely that an algorithm expects a division by zero
> or a range overflow to silently produce an infinity or NaN rather
> than trap.

Possibly, but I'd expect that to produce a divide-by-zero trap.  Divide
by zero and floating overflow are distinct when generated by the
hardware (the both use the "arithmetic exception" SCB slot, but they
push different type codes).  I don't have a recent VAX trap.c at hand
to check, but the 5.2 one does draw the distinction:

	case T_ARITHFLT|T_USER:
		sig = SIGFPE;
		switch (frame->code) {
...
		case ATRP_FLTOVF: code = FPE_FLTOVF; break;
		case ATRP_FLTDIV: code = FPE_FLTDIV; break;
...
		}

Of course, I also have no specific reason to think that the message
printed is accurate, just general faith that nobody would commit code
that maps FPE_FLTDIV into "Floating point overflow".

> It would be interesting to know what AWK program the interpreter
> chokes on.

It would, it would indeed.

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