Tip of the Day: Recovering work after a system error

[JohnS|Dyalog]

Occasionally, owing to an internal error, Dyalog will crash and exit with a "system error". In this case the interpreter saves a diagnostic file called "aplcore" - please mail this file to support@dyalog.com so that we can investigate what caused the crash.

The good news is that your work may not be lost: you can often copy some or all of it from the aplcore file:

      )copy aplcore.

But, on Windows systems YOU MUST SPECIFY THE '.' AFTER THE FILE NAME.

Code: Select all

      ⍝ This will NOT work:      
      )copy aplcore  myfun
ws not found.

      ⍝ This MAY work:
      )copy aplcore. myfun
...saved...

If the workspace was too badly damaged, attempting to copy from the aplcore file may in turn crash saving a new one, which overwrites the first. The best policy, following a crash is:

- Mail a copy of aplcore to support@dyalog.com, together with any helpful information about the circumstances that might have caused the problem.

- Start Dyalog and re-xload your workspace.

- Attempt to copy from aplcore. (note the DOT!).

Finally, if you have changed configuration settings so that the Working Directory is no longer on your Workspace path, you should preface the aplcore with a ./

Code: Select all

      )copy ./aplcore.

[ArrayMac227]

Thanks for the guidance. Some other questions:

Given that currently I am having multiple failures a day, I have renamed and moved the aplcore files as they are created:

rename aplcore {newdir}aplcore-yymmddX.DWS where X is a serial letter A.. and yymmdd is the current date. Does the note about inclusion of the . at the end of the name apply with any )copy that is done.

Is the APL Stack Trace saved anywhere?

TIA

[Vince|Dyalog]

Hi Randy,

You have provided your aplcore file to me at Dyalog Support and I have had a look at it.

For you and anyone else who has problems, one initial step can be to look at the version information in Help | About.

Your interpreter is our initial 17.0 release from 18 July 2018 and so will not have any fixes we have made in the last two years.

In this situation, please email us at Dyalog Support.

1) In the registry here,
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Dyalog\Dyalog APL/W 17.0 Unicode

You can create a string value Named AplcoreName

Whose value is
c:\aplcore\aplcore*.cor

(or some other directory of your choice, which must be a folder which already exists).

We would create aplcore files there, and they would have a number after each name, such as aplcore1.cor, aplcore2.cor, and so on.


2) In the bottom of the aplcore, we have a text section called Interesting Information.

If you open the aplcore in a text editor, you can see this. (Remember not to save it with the text editor!)

The APL characters will be mangled, but you can see the function and line information there.

3) The . at the end of the )copy aplcore command is only needed if there is no extension at the end of the aplcore.

Regards,

Vince

[AndyS|Dyalog]

There's more about this on http://help.dyalog.com/18.0/#Language/Errors/System%20Errors.htm .. it applies to earlier versions too.

[ArrayMac227]

This helped immensely! Liking the reduced stress from knowing the system no longer (touch ood) has random shutdowns. Thanks again for your help!