On Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 10:44:20AM -0700, Ned Freed wrote:
On Thu, Oct 20, 2005 at 01:20:07PM -0400, Scott Hollenbeck wrote:
Section 4.7: "A script will fail if it attempts to execute two or more
vacation actions."
Should "will" be either SHOULD or MUST? "will" describes an
implementation
behavior.
I also had a comment on 4.7 that I sent off-list. Essentially:
I did wonder about that wording; seems to me that the the script as
a whole probably shouldn't fail, but the non-first vacation
action(s) should give an error. i.e. duplication vacation actions
should fail, not abort the entire script. (Not to mention that if
the script were to fail on the second "vacation" then there would be
no need to say "or more".)
I think this is an absolutely terrible idea.
Which idea do you think is terrible? Multiple vacations causing a script
to fail, or simply reporting an error on a multiple vacation?
The idea that multiple vacation action errors should be silently ignored
until the first non-vacation action is taken.
VIolations of the least
astonishment principle abound. Consider:
vacation whatever1;
vacation whatever2;
if test {fileinto blah;}
If the test fails the script appears to work, sending one vacation response
but not the other. But if the test succeeds the script now fails for reasons
having nothing to do with the test. Such a gotcha can remain hidden
indefinitely only to go off when you least expect it - a script landmine.
I do not understand this example at all; perhaps some more words would
help light the bulb. (or perhaps hitting "send" on this message will do
it :-) ). If anything, it sounds like you do not want the script to
fail if there are multiple vacation statements.
No. That's exactly the opposite of what I want.
But I don't understand
how the success or failure of the test causes any more of a debugging
problem with any particular duplicate-vacation handling vs another.
The minute you have failure cases that don't report when encountered and
instead wait for some other condition to arise before becoming an error you've
got a mess on your hands.
Ned