John Chambers wrote:
>Bryan Creer hath writ:
>| >I can see that we're going to end up having to write "smart" software
>| >which can figure out the right answer from anything which looks like abc.
>|
>| Or, alternatively, we can all work to the same standard and save ourselves a
>| lot of trouble.
>
>Fat chance. Even if we try that, experience so far has shown that
>there are serious incompatibilities possible between two programs
>that follow the "standard". This is inevitable in any standard that's
>written in English, which is hopelessly ambiguous. Lawyers have been
>trying for centuries to develop a clear, unambiguous English subset,
>and their general failure is shown by the huge number of cases in
>which the courts have to decide what a law means.
True. An additional problem is one which you yourself pointed out
recently: users often write abc which is intended to be read only by
human readers. In other words they are treating abc as a natural
language. In this context any variation on abc syntax is OK as long
as it's obvious what is meant. I've always been in two minds as to
what programmers should do about this. Coping with all the possible
variations of syntax whose meaning is "obvious" is an interesting
programming challenge. On the other hand, to allow too many variations
is to contribute to the deterioration of the language.
Phil Taylor
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