Suggest to change gnus-sum.el -- deal with float number for article number to read

Suggest to change gnus-sum.el -- deal with float number for article number to read

[Cheng Gao]

After line 5365 of gnus-sum.el:
(setq select (if (stringp select) (string-to-number select) select))

add
(setq select (if (floatp select) (round select) select))



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Re: Suggest to change gnus-sum.el -- deal with float number for

[Reiner Steib]

On Thu, Oct 21 2004, Cheng Gao wrote:

[ Please put the question/suggestion in the body, not only in the
  subject ]

To deal with float number for article number to read:

> After line 5365 of gnus-sum.el:
> (setq select (if (stringp select) (string-to-number select) select))
>
> add
> (setq select (if (floatp select) (round select) select))

Why is this useful?

Bye, Reiner.
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      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: Suggest to change gnus-sum.el -- deal with float number for

[Cheng Gao]

Say a NG has 5000 articles.
When you press SPC on it, you are prompted to input articles to read.

1. If you input "10abcd", 10 articles will be displayed as does by
(setq select (if (stringp select) (string-to-number select) select))

2. If you input "10.11", you get error message, and no articles
   displayed.

The code 

(setq select (if (floatp select) (round select) select))

can solve this.

I think since case 1 is addressed in Gnus for error tolerance and
user-friendliness, why not going a little further?

-- 
相濡以沫，不如相忘于江湖。

Re: Suggest to change gnus-sum.el -- deal with float number for

[Reiner Steib]

On Thu, Oct 21 2004, Cheng Gao wrote:

> Say a NG has 5000 articles.
> When you press SPC on it, you are prompted to input articles to read.
>
> 1. If you input "10abcd", 10 articles will be displayed as does by
> (setq select (if (stringp select) (string-to-number select) select))
>
> 2. If you input "10.11", you get error message, and no articles
>    displayed.

GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out).

> I think since case 1 is addressed in Gnus for error tolerance and
> user-friendliness, 

I don't thinks so.  It is most probably just because
`string-to-number' behaves like this.  Striping non-number characters
is not even documented (beside spaces and tabs):

,----[ C-h f string-to-number RET ]
| string-to-number is a built-in function in `C source code'.
| (string-to-number STRING &optional BASE)
| 
| Parse STRING as a decimal number and return the number.
| This parses both integers and floating point numbers.
| It ignores leading spaces and tabs.
| 
| If BASE, interpret STRING as a number in that base.  If BASE isn't
| present, base 10 is used.  BASE must be between 2 and 16 (inclusive).
| If the base used is not 10, floating point is not recognized.
`----

> why not going a little further?

It makes the code more difficult to read without any gain, IMHO.  _If_
anything should be changed, then Gnus should error out on "10abcd",
too.  (But I don't think this is necessary.)

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/