Golly bugs

[EvinZL]

Since there seems to be way too many golly bug threads, I decided to make a unified thread for golly bugs.

For me, If Golly's stored rule or whatever has the wrong case, then it refuses to open. I can't seem to wipe it either, the layer with that rule had rule changed, I saved a pattern in another rule, I closed that layer, I made a new layer in a different rule, did another rule change, but it still has the same stored rule. Due to Golly's layer limit, this makes me unable to do stuff.

[ihatecorderships]

Renaming a rule of your own is sometimes buggy. For example, I name another OCA X, but then I delete the X name and add the name Y. It sometimes will still show the X name.

[ihatecorderships]

(Double post cuz unrelated)

Why is switch engine ping pong in Life/Breeders and not the Hashlife folder? Catacryst, Gotts-dots and wedge grow are all there.

[Freywa]

The putcells() Python command is broken with respect to its "copy" mode; specifying it does not change the paste behaviour from the default "or". To illustrate:

Code: Select all

import golly as g

g.putcells(g.parse("bo!"))
g.putcells(g.parse("ob!"), 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, "copy")

Running this in an empty universe gives a pattern with 2 cells instead of the expected 1. putcells() should also take keyword arguments as per the documentation – g.putcells(clist, mode="copy") should work, for example.

The "and" mode of the same function is also broken: it doesn't do anything at all. There should be documentation about how the different paste modes work, especially with respect to multi-state rules (the "not" paste mode of putcells() is not available in the GUI, and does an ANDNOT function apparently).

There should also be "add" and "subtract" paste modes. If a is the cell state already there, b is the cell state pasted in and n is the number of states in the current rule, the cell state after the paste should be (a+b) mod n for add and (a-b) mod n for subtract. This would allow arbitrary regions to be replaced with arbitrary other regions.

[dvgrn]

The putcells() Python command is broken with respect to its "copy" mode; specifying it does not change the paste behaviour from the default "or". To illustrate:

Code: Select all

import golly as g

g.putcells(g.parse("bo!"))
g.putcells(g.parse("ob!"), 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, "copy")

Running this in an empty universe gives a pattern with 2 cells instead of the expected 1.

This is a common problem to run into, but it isn't quite true that "copy" has the same behavior as "or". The problem is more that the parse() command doesn't work the way you expect. If parse() by default produced a multistate list of every cell in the bounding box, listing the OFF cells as state 0 and the ON cells as state 1, then the "copy" command would do as you expect. For example:

Code: Select all

import golly as g

bo = [0,0,0,1,0,1,0]
ob = [0,0,1,1,0,0,0]
# ob! overlays bo! in "copy" mode, leaving just one cell
g.putcells(bo)
g.putcells(ob, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, "copy")

# ob! adds a cell to bo! in "or" mode, producing two cells
g.putcells(bo,0,10)
g.putcells(ob, 0, 10, 1, 0, 0, 1, "or")

It's generally not workable to include a whole pile of useless state-0 cells in a cell list, just because they happen to be in the bounding box -- so that is not the way parse() works. parse() only makes a two-state list of the ON cells described by the parsed RLE. This is a lot faster and takes much less memory, and 99% of the time it's exactly what is needed for scripting purposes.

This means that if you want to use the "copy" option, you'll have to build your own state-0 cell list, or a function that makes the multistate list of state-0 cells and state-1 cells for you.

[Book]

(pardon me if this has already been reported)

The Golly "basic rakes" pattern has a bug, per LifeViewer. Discovered this while scrolling through thumbnails in PatMan 1.2 (a feature not yet released).

The last label has an extra parameter. I believe it should read:

#C [[ LABEL 60 20 7 "sample higher-period forerake (p240),\nbased on a repeatably ignited blinker fuse" ]]

[dvgrn]

The Golly "basic rakes" pattern has a bug, per LifeViewer... The last label has an extra parameter.

Oops, looks like we missed that one -- LifeViewer label syntax underwent some simplification a while back, so that's notation that used to work but now isn't needed. Chris Rowett actually noticed the problem back on July 25th, but I forgot to fix it for Golly 4.1. The change is checked in now.

[LaundryPizza03]

Why did the dock icon for Golly 4.1 suddenly change from yellow to green?

Left is Golly 3.4, right is Golly 4.1. I also have Golly 4.0.1, but it's not in my dock. macOS Big Sur 11.6.

weird_golly_icons.png (36.72 KiB) Viewed 11039 times

[Andrew]

Why did the dock icon for Golly 4.1 suddenly change from yellow to green?

Not sure. Maybe Big Sur automatically changes the icon color to help distinguish different versions of the same app.

[LaundryPizza03]

Why did the dock icon for Golly 4.1 suddenly change from yellow to green?

Not sure. Maybe Big Sur automatically changes the icon color to help distinguish different versions of the same app.

No, it appeared suddenly well after I had opened it and went away when I restarted the computer (for unrelated reasons).

[LaundryPizza03]

Is this the correct place to report bugs in Golly scripts? oscar.lua misidentifies the period and speed of B0 patterns where an odd phase has the same shape as an even phase. For example, this 2c/6d is misidentified as co:

Code: Select all

x = 3, y = 2, rule = B012c3acinq4inqwyz5ejny6i78/S01e2aek4ceijty5eny6eik
obo$2bo!

[GUYTU6J]

Last year a new LifeWiki page named "index.php" was created for no clear reason, and was soon deleted (see User talk:JsfasdF248). Just now I found the unexplained reason: it was linked to in Golly's Help documents, where the URL is written as

Code: Select all

http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

But the correct syntax is either

Code: Select all

https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page

or the shorter

Code: Select all

https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Main_Page

A quick scan suggests that this error appears in credits.html and refs.html.

[pzq_alex]

Is this the correct place to report bugs in Golly scripts? oscar.lua misidentifies the period and speed of B0 patterns where an odd phase has the same shape as an even phase. For example, this 2c/6d is misidentified as co:

Code: Select all

x = 3, y = 2, rule = B012c3acinq4inqwyz5ejny6i78/S01e2aek4ceijty5eny6eik
obo$2bo!

Easy fix: turn that B0 rule into an alternating ruletable.

[legomiku]

Hi there, I'm quite a golly noob, and I'm really fascinated with Cellular autonoma. I have a pretty good pc, yet it stutters sometimes. This does not happen with the computers at my high school. Am i supposed to set a priority for golly to fix this?

[dani]

Hi there, I'm quite a golly noob, and I'm really fascinated with Cellular autonoma. I have a pretty good pc, yet it stutters sometimes. This does not happen with the computers at my high school. Am i supposed to set a priority for golly to fix this?

It might be your refresh rate. My monitor is 144Hz and the population count stutters a lot. I'm not sure how to fix it.

[wirehead]

How do I compile Golly 3.4 on a Raspberry Pi (32-bit)? I tried downloading the Linux tar file from Sourceforge, but apparently that was compiled for x86, not ARM. 3.3 has a few bugs, but that is the latest version in the apt repos. I am a Python3/Javascript guy and know nothing about C++ or compiling stuff.

[GUYTU6J]

There has been a working link to "Gliders in Life-Like Cellular Automata" in Golly's Online Archives for a while now, I think since May or so. I haven't checked, but I'm guessing Andrew Trevorrow didn't know where to get an updated database from, so most likely he just used a version that David Eppstein supplied. Time to improve on that, maybe?

Is it down for improvement now? It gives a "301 Moved Permanently" message and points to this link, but when trying to access that site in Golly, an error pops up: "Unable to open requested HTML document: file://https/gliders/golly_index.html".

The site can be reached in browser, but then none of the listed links reacts to clicking.

[LaundryPizza03]

I discovered in 4.1 on macOS 11.6 that if a Python script calls a function in a separate script, Golly will not recompile the separate script if it is updated and the script which calls it is rerun. Steps to reproduce:

1. Create a B.py script that contains an easy to identify error on one line.
2. Create an A.py script which calls the bugged function in B.py.
3. Run A.py in Golly 4.1.
4. Fix the error B.py.
5. Rerun A.py in Golly 4.1.
6. There should be an error message about the line that was just fixed, but with the corrected syntax.

The only remedy is to quit and restart Golly. I do not know if this happens in Lua as well, or if it also happens in macOS 12.

[wirehead]

I discovered in 4.1 on macOS 11.6 that if a Python script calls a function in a separate script, Golly will not recompile the separate script if it is updated and the script which calls it is rerun. Steps to reproduce:

1. Create a B.py script that contains an easy to identify error on one line.
2. Create an A.py script which calls the bugged function in B.py.
3. Run A.py in Golly 4.1.
4. Fix the error B.py.
5. Rerun A.py in Golly 4.1.
6. There should be an error message about the line that was just fixed, but with the corrected syntax.

The only remedy is to quit and restart Golly. I do not know if this happens in Lua as well, or if it also happens in macOS 12.

For the inexperienced programmer that I am, this sounds more like a bug in Python than a bug in Golly. What Python version are you using? I am using 3.10.5 and have never noticed a bug like this.

[Andrew]

Is it down for improvement now? It gives a "301 Moved Permanently" message and points to this link, but when trying to access that site in Golly, an error pops up: "Unable to open requested HTML document: file://https/gliders/golly_index.html".

Works fine in Golly 4.2b1 (which now supports https links when accessing the online archives). You must be using an older version of Golly.

[Andrew]

I discovered in 4.1 on macOS 11.6 that if a Python script calls a function in a separate script, Golly will not recompile the separate script if it is updated and the script which calls it is rerun.

See item #2 in Help > Python Scripting > Potential problems.

[AlbertArmStain]

I left golly running overnight and this is what happened:

Screen Shot 2022-08-16 at 5.32.56 PM.png (545.61 KiB) Viewed 10340 times

Pasting and selecting have a white tint, you can’t scroll in or out, and left clicking doesn’t work.

[wirehead]

I left golly running overnight.

Quit and restart. That usually works for everything in my experience.

[Andrew]

I left golly running overnight and this is what happened: ...

Looks like you used an experimental build of web Golly 4.2 we're currently testing. Unfortunately it has a few bugs so I've reverted to the old version. You'll probably need to force your browser to reload the page. In Safari hold down the option key while opening its View menu (you might also need to select Develop > Empty Caches).

[AlbertArmStain]

I left golly running overnight.

Quit and restart. That usually works for everything in my experience.

Nope, still broken.

I left golly running overnight and this is what happened: ...

Looks like you used an experimental build of web Golly 4.2 we're currently testing. Unfortunately it has a few bugs so I've reverted to the old version. You'll probably need to force your browser to reload the page. In Safari hold down the option key while opening its View menu (you might also need to select Develop > Empty Caches).

I’m using google, not Safari.