Ninkasi Bugs 2

Fixed one more Ninkasi bug today!

Functions in Ninkasi have three undocumented variables. Named function arguments just refer to stack positions relative to the current stack frame, so it was pretty simple to add variables that refer to the function ID itself, the return pointer, and the argument count, because all of these values exist on the stack just like the arguments to the function itself.

These are considered debugging-only features, but they should at least be not-broken debugging-only features.

These variables are:

The Bug

At some point along the way, I had designed the 'call' instruction to expect a stack that looked like this (example 3-parameter function):

index | value          | type
---------------------------------
-6    | ...            |
-5    | arg0           | any type
-4    | arg1           | any type
-3    | arg2           | any type
-2    | _functionId    | function
-1    | _argumentCount | integer

Later down the road, I had to change it to this:

index | value          | type
---------------------------------
-6    | ...            |
-5    | _functionId    | function
-4    | arg0           | any type
-3    | arg1           | any type
-2    | arg2           | any type
-1    | _argumentCount | integer

I'm not sure off the top of my head why I had to do this, but my guess is that it was simply the order that arguments needed to be evaluated and then pushed onto the stack.

Anyway, when I made this change, I apparently forgot to update the position of _functionId. The arguments still needed a +1 offset in the stack that I always considered a sort of mystery. Well, the +1 offset was to skip the _functionId, and the functionId was pointing to one of the arguments.

The Fix

This was a pretty simple fix. Just remove the offset, and move the _functionId setup code to before the argument setup loop.

Sometimes it really is that easy!

Posted: 2021-09-06

Tags: ninkasi