I'd rather have it explicit too, to avoid any guessing. And that saves me a memory cell (don't have much, so must not clog up my brain ;-) to remember the default is "less", or to look it up in the doc just to make sure. So +1 to have it explicit. I looked at <propertyfile>, and the default is '=' for their action, so if you want to put a default, "equals" makes most sense to me too. My $.02--DD
-----Original Message----- From: Rob Oxspring [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 12:26 PM To: Ant Developers List Subject: Re: Selectors documentation and a Reference bug fix > >When fields: > >And now we reach the bottom of the pile. When faced with <date > >datetime="06/18/1979 00:00 AM"/> I would assume that it is going to select > >files with exactly that date rather than anything before it. I guess > >"equal" is going to be the least used of the "when" possibilities but I > >still feel its the logical default. The argument makes sense to me with > ><size size="1" units"Mi"/> too - seeing this for the first time I would > >assume that we are talking exact matches rather than maximum. So how about > >changing these defaults to equal when faced the less/equal/more question? > > I could make this change, but I'm not partial to it. I hear what you are > saying about expectations (and I've argued that Ant should act as a user > expects as much as possible myself) but I'm not thrilled with making an > unusual usecase the default. My inclination is to save the user from having > to type things as much as possible, even if it means forcing them to read > the documentation. I thought this would be the reply - I really think that ant is generally very good at being verbose and descriptive in its syntax and it would be a shame to let this slip by. Taking another tack: if we don't want to use equal as the default (being uncommon is a fair argument) then why choose "less" over "more"? These strike me as equally common and so we'd only be shortening the typing for half the cases. The bottom line is that I think that people maintaining the code / script being able to quickly understand it is far more important than the coder typing less. Maybe this is a case where no default should be given? I guess we could do with thoughts / feedback from others really. Rob -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
