Re: pitchedtrill accidental problem

[Mats Bengtsson]

Valentin Villenave wrote:

> 2008/5/18 Neil Puttock <address@hidden>:
>
>  
>
> > I just install and uninstall (the tedious bit.)
> >    
>
> Then you're either you're a hero either you're just insane :-)
>  
It's not that bad, at least if you know about the principle
called binary search in computer science. For example,
if you know that a bug happened somewhere between
2.11.0 and 2.11.32, try first the version in the middle, 2.11.16
and see if it happened before or after. If it was after 2.11.16,
then try the version in the middle between 2.11.16 and 2.11.32.
Continuing this way, you half the number of possible alternatives
in each iteration.

(I once saw this simple algorithm described in a paper from
early 1960:s or late 1950:s, where the paper basically started off
by explaining what a computer was. Since they didn't use any
pseudo-code or flow-diagram that resemble anything you see
today, it actually took me some time to decipher that what was
described was just a plain binary search.)

   /Mats

  /Mats