"Moore, Robert" wrote:
> Well, the *real* problem is that there is no Return AML opcode in the
> control method and the interpreter therefore does not return a value.
>
> However, to answer your question with a question:
>
> Would you ask a C compiler, or any other compiler for that matter, to
> actually *GUESS* at what you had intended to be the return value of a
> function?
Is this a trick question?
If I had to write my source code to read-only media, with no
way to tell whose compiler was going to be used on it, and had
no way to fix it afterwards, I think the answer would have to
be "yes". 8-) 8-).
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"
-- Terry
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