🚀 go-pugleaf

I said:
>I hope we're not going the way of C which thinks it's acceptable to give "an
>exception" (core dump) every time some poor programmer passes NULL to
>strlen()!

Gernot Heiser replied:
> If every program bug would immediately force a program dump debugging
> would be a piece of cake. But I know, some people like to debug...

I don't think that's the right philosophy to program into support-library
routines.  In most cases, I intended to pass a null string; if I use the C
constant NULL, I get a core-dump.  If I use a literal null string ("") I get
what I wanted, which was a length of zero.

This is more a 'religion' argument but it relates back to the original point
of what to do when type-converting routines get a value that's outside the
range of defined values for the target type.  My opinion is that these
routines should return an out-of-band signal which the programmer could then
test for.  Core dumping or other uncatchable program exception is, in my
opinion, a *very* poor way of handling errors.

--Alan Wexelblat
ARPA: WEX@MCC.COM
UUCP: {harvard, gatech, pyramid, &c.}!sally!im4u!milano!wex

"How do we measure the distance between Ken Kesey and Carlos Lehder?"
 -- Hunter Thompson