Question about EGT formats

[hgm]

I understand that the various flavors of end-game tables provide their own probing code in DLLs.

How is the distinction between different architectures (32-bit vs 64-bit) handled here? Does the directory in which the EGTs are distributed contain DLLs with different names, and is it left to the engine to decide which one it should use?

[Dann Corbit]

I understand that the various flavors of end-game tables provide their own probing code in DLLs.

How is the distinction between different architectures (32-bit vs 64-bit) handled here? Does the directory in which the EGTs are distributed contain DLLs with different names, and is it left to the engine to decide which one it should use?

Some also use library or direct linking, which solves that problem.
In the case of Daniel Shawul's endgame tablebase files, he does use different DLL names:

Code: Select all

 Directory of F:\chess\egbb
2009-04-04  06:19 PM            86,016 egbbdll.dll
2012-01-23  02:37 PM           136,192 egbbdll64.dll

Then from probe.cpp in scorpio, we see this:

Code: Select all

#ifdef _WIN32
#   ifdef ARC_64BIT
#       define EGBB_NAME "egbbdll64.dll"
#   else
#       define EGBB_NAME "egbbdll.dll"
#   endif
#else
#   ifdef ARC_64BIT
#       define EGBB_NAME "egbbso64.so"
#   else
#       define EGBB_NAME "egbbso.so"
#   endif
#endif

[Daniel Shawul]

AFAIK only scorpio and knightdreamer bitbases have DLLs for probing EGTs - unlike f.i bulky syzygy which leaves programmers having to incorporate a huge block of C code into their repos
Also DLLs can also be automatically loaded in python for scripting work with chess endgames.

Daniel

[gbtami]

AFAIK only scorpio and knightdreamer bitbases have DLLs for probing EGTs - unlike f.i bulky syzygy which leaves programmers having to incorporate a huge block of C code into their repos
Also DLLs can also be automatically loaded in python for scripting work with chess endgames.

Daniel

Gaviota and syzygy are available from Python also using python-chess.