Thus spake Terry Lambert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > 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"
Sometimes. But see http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/DWIM.html To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
