On 1/21/2009, someone who shall remain nameless wrote:
A similar case I've seen come up many times over the years is that of
scripting languages that allow abbreviations. So you write something like this
in a script:
$ rec foo
where rec is an abbreviation for "recover". This works because there's no other
command that begins with "rec". Then the system is upgraded, and a new "recall"
command is added. And the script breaks because now "rec" is ambiguous. (And
yes, this example really happened.)
Gosh, I can't remember the last time I was bitten by that kind of sloppy coding,
but it was probably shortly after I started programming on an IBM 370-148, back
when dinosaurs still roamed the earth.
--
Paul Russell, Senior Systems Administrator
OIT Messaging Services Team
University of Notre Dame
prussell(_at_)nd(_dot_)edu