Re: [9fans] ... in the Kingdom of Sources

["Douglas A. Gwyn" <DAGwyn@null.net>]

rog@vitanuova.com wrote:
> is truncating a 1MB file to 512K due to a mid-stream dud character
> really a better solution than just flagging the dud character itself?
> as you suggest, the answer is subjective, but surely the old maxim is
> useful:
> 	be liberal in what you accept and strict in what you generate.

The trouble is, most programs are data transformers, and
garbage in means garbage out *unless* the garbage is detected
and an appropriate strategy used to deal with it.  What is
appropriate depends on the intended application.

An impossible character encoding in input text data indicates
that the preceding process did not do *its* job.  Naturally
you want to be able to handle such situations.  But merely
ignoring the fact that something is wrong and proceeding with
the computation just propagates the error; it doesn't "fix"
the situation.  It probably doesn't matter much if you're just
hacking, but if something important depends on having correct
data, a better strategy is called for.  I would hate to think
that the codes sent to a respirator or pneumatic brake hadn't
been correctly generated.

I admit that lazy programming is more fun.  So have fun, but
don't think that an approach that has different goals is
therefore inherently deficient.