Thanks, Paris, for your intervention, although I fear it was too late.
Well, since Tom claims to have put me in his kill file, he may never see
this. But for the record...
Tom Christiansen wrote:
> >Can't we all just play nice?
>
> Apparently not. Several of us attempted to explain why this didn't
> make sense, for many reasons. GL wouldn't hear any of it, stubbornly
> adhering to this notion despite what was said, often completely
> ignoring or apparently purposefully misunderstanding the points.
It's true that I think that NULL would be an extremely useful concept,
and until there is a cogent argument to the contrary, I will continue to
believe it. I've been working with databases for 21 years, and with Perl
for 5, and I truly believe NULL would be a useful addition to using Perl
to work with databases.
However, it is not true that I ignored or purposefully misunderstood any
of the points raised. The record stands for itself in the archive. I
may not be as brilliant as TC, I may not have understood all the points,
and I may not have as much history with using Perl as TC, but I can
distinguish logical propositions and argumentative posturing. Here's
Tom's first complete message in the RFC 263 thread for example:
> >Currently, Perl has the concept of C<undef>, which means that a value is
> >not defined. One thing it lacks, however, is the concept of C<null>,
> >which means that a value is known to be unknown or not applicable. These
> >are two separate concepts.
>
> No, they aren't.
>
> --tom
>
>
> He then started accusing others of insults where none existed.
> Screw that. Since he asked for insults, now he got them.
The record is in the archives. If anyone cares to figure out where the
first insult came from, they can read it. I'm sure glad Damian called me
on my sniping remark to him before this imbroglio started... so I was
really, really trying to keep my nose clean. Really, as Damian pointed
out, such bickering is not a profitable use of time.
--
Glenn
=====
Even if you're on the right track,
you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers
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