Using Suppression to Manage Errors

For the initial run on a large program, the number of errors may be so large as to be overwhelming. In this case, it may be better to take a phased approach. This can be done using the suppress command to reduce the reported errors to a manageable number, fixing just those errors, and repeating the cycle; suppressing fewer and fewer errors with each iteration.

For example, you could focus on a few error types at one time. The most common error types typically encountered are rui, rua, and wua, usually in that order. rui errors are less serious errors (although they can cause more serious errors to happen later), and often a program may still work correctly with these errors. rua and wua errors are more serious because they are accesses to or from invalid memory addresses, and always indicate a coding error of some sort.

You could start by suppressing rui and rua errors. After fixing all the wua errors that occur, run the program again, this time suppressing only rui errors. After fixing all the rua errors that occur, run the program again, this time with no errors suppressed. Fix all the rui errors. Lastly, run the program a final time to ensure there are no errors left.

If you want to suppress the last reported error, use suppress -last. You also can limit the number of errors reported without using the suppress command by using dbxenv variable rtc_error_limit n instead.