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000171_icon-group-sender _Fri Jul 30 12:37:01 1999.msg
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Received: (from root@localhost)
by baskerville.CS.Arizona.EDU (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id MAA13972
for icon-group-addresses; Fri, 30 Jul 1999 12:35:39 -0700 (MST)
Message-Id: <199907301935.MAA13972@baskerville.CS.Arizona.EDU>
From: "Frank Lhota" <lhotaf@lexma.meitech.com>
To: <icon-group@optima.CS.Arizona.EDU>
Subject: When Do You Keep A Quirk?
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 11:39:17 -0400
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Status: RO
Gordon Peterson makes an excellent argument for moving to a less quirky
definition of basename, going so far as to purposely break older programs
that might depend on the quirks. I am totally sympathetic to this point of
view. I had a friend that worked on the ANSI C standards committee. He
frequently lamented that there were proposed changes to C that every
committee member agreed would make a for a better language, but were voted
down because they would break large, existing applications. One has to weigh
the cost of revising old programs with the possible gains in new programs.
In the case of basename, there are over a dozen IPL sources that use
basename. If these IPL programs have not been tested with the new version of
basename, I would be very concerned about this change, for this can effect
programs that are not even using basename directly. Of course, it is very
hard to determine how much non-IPL code out there uses basename, or how many
programs depend on the quirks. As much as I prefer the new version of
basename, making this change in the short run is too risky.
If and when we do wish to change the behavior of basename, there is a way to
ease the migration path. We can write a procedure old_basename that has the
old behavior, then add the following line to old source files:
$define basename old_basename
One final point: could we please cut down on ending Icon group mailings with
political or religious messages? I say this not because I disagree (or
agree) with the religious / political / aesthetic views of the members of
the group. It's just that the purpose of the group is to exchange
information on the Icon programming language. This is not the place for
discussion of these other topics.