From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] ... in the Kingdom of Sources From: rog@vitanuova.com In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 14:06:48 +0100 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 30cb195c-eacc-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 > flagging a conversion error only by a specific value > embedded in the converted data means that the error will > be missed unless the application scans the data looking > for it. Seems to me that encourages use of erroneous data. that argument strikes me as similar to the reasoning used by politicians when they oppose reducing the harm associated with illicit drugs on the grounds that it will encourage their use. surely it's not a matter of encouraging or discouraging the use of erroneous data, but simply of making as best a job of dealing with the situations we encounter. i'm certainly glad that when i accidentally browse a piece of latin-1 text in plan 9, i get almost all the text, with an occasional error character thrown in.