1<html lang="en"> 2<head> 3<title>Bug Criteria - GNU Binary Utilities</title> 4<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html"> 5<meta name="description" content="GNU Binary Utilities"> 6<meta name="generator" content="makeinfo 4.13"> 7<link title="Top" rel="start" href="index.html#Top"> 8<link rel="up" href="Reporting-Bugs.html#Reporting-Bugs" title="Reporting Bugs"> 9<link rel="next" href="Bug-Reporting.html#Bug-Reporting" title="Bug Reporting"> 10<link href="http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/" rel="generator-home" title="Texinfo Homepage"> 11<!-- 12Copyright (C) 1991-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 13 14Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document 15under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 16or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; 17with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no 18Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the 19section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License''. 20 21--> 22<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> 23<style type="text/css"><!-- 24 pre.display { font-family:inherit } 25 pre.format { font-family:inherit } 26 pre.smalldisplay { font-family:inherit; font-size:smaller } 27 pre.smallformat { font-family:inherit; font-size:smaller } 28 pre.smallexample { font-size:smaller } 29 pre.smalllisp { font-size:smaller } 30 span.sc { font-variant:small-caps } 31 span.roman { font-family:serif; font-weight:normal; } 32 span.sansserif { font-family:sans-serif; font-weight:normal; } 33--></style> 34<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../cs.css"> 35</head> 36<body> 37<div class="node"> 38<a name="Bug-Criteria"></a> 39<p> 40Next: <a rel="next" accesskey="n" href="Bug-Reporting.html#Bug-Reporting">Bug Reporting</a>, 41Up: <a rel="up" accesskey="u" href="Reporting-Bugs.html#Reporting-Bugs">Reporting Bugs</a> 42<hr> 43</div> 44 45<h3 class="section">19.1 Have You Found a Bug?</h3> 46 47<p><a name="index-bug-criteria-167"></a> 48If you are not sure whether you have found a bug, here are some guidelines: 49 50 51<a name="index-fatal-signal-168"></a> 52<a name="index-crash-169"></a> 53<ul><li>If a binary utility gets a fatal signal, for any input whatever, that is 54a bug. Reliable utilities never crash. 55 56 <p><a name="index-error-on-valid-input-170"></a><li>If a binary utility produces an error message for valid input, that is a 57bug. 58 59 <li>If you are an experienced user of binary utilities, your suggestions for 60improvement are welcome in any case. 61</ul> 62 63 </body></html> 64 65