GS Hacking & Debugging tools

[nathan@parka.winternet.com (Nathan Mates)]

[Anyone who associates 'hacker' in this article's subject needs to
have their terminology corrected from that which the media's gotten it
wrong. A 'cracker' is one who breaks in to systems for malicious
purposes. A 'hacker' is one who programs innovatively, for a long
time, and the like. Go see http://www.ccil.org/jargon/ for more info;
here's their full definition of hacker:

hacker /n./ 

[originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who
enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to
stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to
learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs program, or one
who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a Unix
hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit
them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be
an astronomy hacker, for example. 7.  One who enjoys the intellectual
challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations.

Sorry, long parenthetical bit]

   Well, GUPP's out, and my Icon file verifier just got working last
night (*#^&# Orca/C 2.0.3 corrupts the stack bigtime when int and
longints are used in calculations (even when typecast correctly); that
was the incentive I needed to install C 2.1, which works an order of
magnitude better. Expect an upload later tonight).

   [Oh, and while I'm at it, no thanks to Orca/C 2.1's insistence on
replacing a 3rd party editor (Edit-16) with its own, even though I
chose to update it. Sorry, but I don't quite always like Orca/Editor]

   However, as some GS types (no need to drop names) wanted copies of
my debugging tools that I used for finding and hunting the bugs that
GUPP 1.0.1 fixes, I decided to upload them. They're only on my
personal ftp area, ftp.ugcs.caltech.edu, pub/nathan, filenames
hh0.3.shk and segf0.13.shk. Basically, these work for me, but they're
not very well documented, and not guaranteed to be stable or bugfree.
I do appreciate comments on them, and am planning to unify most to
all of my tools into a very nice debugging facility.

   These tools are not meant for the casual GS user--in fact,
SegFaulter was designed to (and does a good job of it) break other
programs. Don't install and hope to use them unless you're proficient
in assembly and debugging.

Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~nathan/      <*>
# And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the
# Kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in
# parables" Mark 4:11, NRSV