September 20, 2003
MarkBernstein.org
 

Remember this number

A very advanced Tinderbox user reported a very obscure (but very disturbing) under-the-hood problem. I spent many hours staring at the problem with specially-instrumented test-builds of Tinderbox and elaborate test files. The symptom: Tinderbox.

Why, oh why, would several different notes -- all of which had would read the test file, and several different notes would end up with the same (purportedly unique) internal ID. 4294967295 different IDs in the XML file, all end up with the same ID? Why 4294967295?

If you're a software pro, you should know the answer by now.