On Wed, 2004-09-15 at 09:52, James Edward Gray II wrote:
> On Sep 15, 2004, at 10:39 AM, Robert Klemme wrote:
> 

> My project is a simulation.  I have a "dump" from a correct simulator.  
> I can compare my dump with theirs.
> 
> Part of the simulation includes random number generation.  To solve 
> this, the spec gives you their random number generation system to use 
> for the purposes of testing.  Dumps do not include random numbers that 
> were generated.

     I was in a *very* similar situation (except I had the random stream
as part of the validation dump suite and thus could drill down deeper)
and eventually (with much appreciated help from the folks here) tracked
it down to a bug in bignum.c (see
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/111123 and
the proceeding thread).

     Executive summary: the bignum and & or operations were not getting
along with the garbage collector, causing infrequent errors after a
program had run for a while.  Basically, if garbage collection happened
during certain bignum operations, the results could be corrupted.

     I just patched my copy (I can't change to a new version
mid-validation) but I understand that the change is in CVS as well.

     Hope this help.

     -- MarkusQ