Re: String Constants

From	anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl)
Subject	Re: String Constants
Newsgroups	comp.lang.forth
References	(3 earlier) <9sGdnc0x26rcpyzQnZ2dnUVZ_hSdnZ2d@supernews.com> <6f8534c7-c237-422d-b0a3-508c3fbdbb69@dn9g2000vbb.googlegroups.com> <EOmdnfzW8ZdkNSzQnZ2dnUVZ_gidnZ2d@supernews.com> <0242bcd1-96f9-41ad-9d32-de4f94a549c7@x37g2000prb.googlegroups.com> <lcSdnduu5oeiEy_QnZ2dnUVZ_qGdnZ2d@supernews.com>
Organization	Institut fuer Computersprachen, Technische Universitaet Wien
Date	2011-04-23 11:44 +0000
Message-ID	<2011Apr23.134428@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> (permalink)

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Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> writes:
>BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> wrote:
>And neither would I, but when writing portable programs that will run
>on systems you've never seen and may not yet exist, it makes sense to
>apply Postel's principle:
>
>Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept.

Maybe so, but that's not a good basis for designing standards.

>Which, in this case, means that if you program for "the devil's
>implementation" of Forth, one that satisfies the letter of the law,
>but is as perversely written as possible, your program will be robust
>even in the presence of occasional foibles of implementation.

Sure, that may be heaven for language lawyers, but in practice most
programmers write programs such that they work on the real systems
they expect their program to be used with.  And that's the sane
approach, because there is no test whether a program will work on a
"devil's implementation".  E.g., As a result, most portable Forth code
assumes 1 chars=1, because all maintained systems implement that, we
cannot test code that tries to cater for the "devil's system" in this
area.

If you change the standard in the way you suggested ("I'd simply make
it clear that using HERE before it was allotted was nonstandard"),
there would be no way for programmers to test whether their program
violates this restriction.  So this suggested change would make
standard Forth more of a language for language lawyers than for
programmers than it is now.  Not a good direction to take.

- anton
-- 
M. Anton Ertl  http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
     New standard: http://www.forth200x.org/forth200x.html
   EuroForth 2010: http://www.euroforth.org/ef10/

Thread

Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-18 20:52 -0700
  Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-19 03:44 -0500
    Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-21 21:34 -0700
      Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-22 03:20 -0500
        Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-22 07:37 -0700
          Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-22 11:12 -0500
            Re: String Constants anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2011-04-22 17:36 +0000
              Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-22 13:05 -0500
                Re: String Constants anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2011-04-22 18:17 +0000
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-23 03:22 -0500
                Re: String Constants anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2011-04-23 11:35 +0000
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-23 11:37 -0500
                Re: String Constants anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2011-04-23 12:07 +0000
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-23 11:40 -0500
                Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-22 12:22 -0700
            Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-22 12:13 -0700
              Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-23 03:30 -0500
                Re: String Constants anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2011-04-23 11:44 +0000
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-23 11:47 -0500
                Re: String Constants anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2011-04-26 09:23 +0000
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-26 06:49 -0500
                Re: String Constants Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2011-04-25 00:50 -0700
                Re: String Constants anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2011-04-26 10:08 +0000
                Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-23 10:14 -0700
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-24 03:15 -0500
                Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-24 13:26 -0700
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-24 17:03 -0500
                Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-24 19:05 -0700
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-25 03:08 -0500
                Re: String Constants kenney@cix.compulink.co.uk - 2011-04-25 07:07 -0500
                Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-25 08:00 -0700
                Re: String Constants Elizabeth D Rather <erather@forth.com> - 2011-04-25 08:56 -1000
                Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-25 07:45 -0700
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-26 03:42 -0500
                Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-26 11:20 -0700
                Re: String Constants Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2011-04-26 11:02 -0700
                Re: String Constants Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2011-04-26 21:59 +0200
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-27 03:26 -0500
                Re: String Constants Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2011-04-27 09:12 -0700
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-27 11:28 -0500
                Re: String Constants Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2011-04-27 10:47 -0700
                Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-27 10:20 -0700
            Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-22 12:37 -0700

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