C360-25

What is C360-25?

NetHack 3.6.0 introduced additional details in the score file for deaths in complicated circumstances, such as "while paralyzed" or "while praying".

But there was a bug in the code: if a death with "while " had a high enough score to get into the record file (the data that gets displayed when you ask for high scores, such as with "nethack -s"), that "while " would get added to all the entries with lower scores in the record file. And every time the record file changes this can happen again, on top of the existing errors, yielding entries with multiple "while " additions.

Is this still going on?

It depends. If you are playing the official 3.6.0 release binaries, then this is still happening. You can deal with it (see below) but it could come back. The bug was fixed in commit 20b2120f3f1b9888baad327f53a05b73d131d471 on December 17, 2015 - if you are playing a binary built from git after this commit AND your record file is not corrupt, you do not have to do anything.

How do I deal with a corrupt score file?

You have several options:
  1. delete the record file and start fresh
  2. ignore it
  3. try to fix it

How do I fix it?

  1. Make sure you have both the record file and either a logfile or an xlogfile. If you don't, sorry, but there isn't enough information available to fix the record file.
  2. You need a version of a programming language called awk. It may be available on (or for) your system under any of the following names: awk gawk nawk.
  3. Download fixrecord.awk.
  4. See the top of that file for how to run it.