On 2011-05-28, Roy Smith <r...@panix.com> wrote: > One reasonable definition of a bug is something the code > actually does which differs from the documented interface. > Unless you know what the code is supposed to do, how can you > possibly look at it and say whether it has a bug or not? For > example, take this function: > > def foo(): > l = [1, 2, 3] > return l[3] > > Is this code correct? I'll bet most people would look at this > and say, "I'm not sure what he had in mind, but whatever it > was, this has to be a bug because he's indexing past the end of > the list". Well, what if I showed you the interface contract: > > def foo(): > "Raise IndexError. This is useful as a testing fixture." > l = [1, 2, 3] > return l[3] > > Now it's obvious that the function does exactly what it's > supposed to do (even if it's not the best way to do it).
That's an excellent illustration of bad code hid by a bad comment. Perhaps better: def foo(): raise IndexError() -- Neil Cerutti -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
