Gabriel Dos Reis wrote: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > | Gabriel Dos Reis wrote: > | > | > | > | (Unfortunately, you can hardly write interesting programs in any safe > | > | subset of C.) > | > > | > Fortunately, some people do, as living job. > | > | I don't think so. Maybe the question is what a "safe subset" consists > | of. In my book, it excludes all features that are potentially unsafe. > > if you equate "unsafe" with "potentially unsafe", then you have > changed gear and redefined things on the fly, and things that could > be given sense before ceases to have meaning. I decline following > such an uncertain, extreme, path.
An unsafe *feature* is one that can potentially exhibit unsafe behaviour. How else would you define it, if I may ask? A safe *program* may or may not use unsafe features, but that is not the point when we talk about safe *language subsets*. > I would suggest you give more thoughts to the claims made in > > http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~sweirich/types/archive/1999-2003/msg00298.html Thanks, I am aware of it. Taking into account the hypothetical nature of the argument, and all the caveats listed with respect to C, I do not think that it is too relevant for the discussion at hand. Moreover, Harper talks about a relative concept of "C-safety". I assume that everybody here understands that by "safe" in this discussion we mean something else (in particular, memory safety). Or are you trying to suggest that we should indeed consider C safe for the purpose of this discussion? - Andreas -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
