On Fri, 12 Mar 2004, Mark E. Mallett wrote:
That does look like that is what that script would do, and no, it's
probably not useful. I would call that a bad script.
Well-defined syntax shouldn't let you write a "bad script".
I would have to flat-out disagree with that. But that's a whole
nother conversation.
Semantics. It's a syntacticly correct script that even has a valid
interpretation, which is logical, even if its not necessaraly what the
user would expect. That does not at all make it a "bad script", as you
say.
On a related note: do people who will be confused by languages write
scripts by hand, anyway?
Its possible to write code in any language that is confusing, the point is
to minimize the confusion. Even experienced users might not see what is
going on in a script that is a thousand lines long, with fileintos
into the same mailbox separated by a few hundred lines.
I imagine that those people use some interface that generates scripts
for them, and "power users" will write scripts by hand. Neither of
these groups should object to having powerful underlying facilities.
But they might object to the language making it easy to make mistakes.
-Rob
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Rob Siemborski | Andrew Systems Group * Research Systems Programmer
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