Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 19:46:04 -0700 From: David Schultz <dschultz@uclink.Berkeley.EDU> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: "Moore, Robert" <robert.moore@intel.com>, "'Mitsuru IWASAKI'" <iwasaki@jp.FreeBSD.org>, yb@sainte-barbe.org, acpi-jp@jp.FreeBSD.org, current@FreeBSD.ORG, "Grover, Andrew" <andrew.grover@intel.com> Subject: Re: [acpi-jp 1735] Re: Call for testers: acpica-unix-20020815 Message-ID: <20020828024604.GA4653@HAL9000.homeunix.com> In-Reply-To: <3D6BF4E6.9B441A6B@mindspring.com> References: <B9ECACBD6885D5119ADC00508B68C1EA0D19B71B@orsmsx107.jf.intel.com> <3D6BF4E6.9B441A6B@mindspring.com>
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Thus spake Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>: > FWIW, there's historical precedent for this: the DEC VAX/VMS > C compiler would imply semicolons for the programmer that > forgot them, and a couple of other similar "fixups", issue a > warning, but the resulting code would run "as the programmer > most likely intended", rather than not generating a running > program at all. > > The issue here is one of syntactical vs. grammatical ambiguity; > if the only choices are between two possible outcomes, and one > of them is a failure to operate at all, while the other is to > operate, but potentially incorrectly. The upshot is that ir > can't hurt, and it might help: > > assumption? > no yes > --------------------------------- > grammar error | FAILS | FAILS | > ------------------------------------------------| > syntax error | FAILS | WORKS | > ------------------------------------------------- > > So the worst possible outcome in the failure case is that it > fails -- which it already does, without the assumption -- and > the best possible outcome is that it succeeds when it wouldn't > have. > > "Anything that works is better than anything that doesn't" Sometimes. But see http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/DWIM.html To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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