On Thu, Mar 25, 1999 at 09:37:53AM -0800, Kai MacTane wrote (in his signature):
> From the Jargon File: (v4.0.0, 25 Jul 1996)
>
> can't happen
>
> The traditional program comment for code executed under a condition
> that should never be true, for example a file size computed as
> negative ... Although "can't happen" events are genuinely infrequent
> in production code, programmers wise enough to check for them habitu-
> ally are often surprised at how frequently they are triggered during
> development and how many headaches checking for them turns out to
> head off.
This is way, way off topic, but the programmers of Microsoft Outlook Express 5,
which was just released last week, apparently think that a mail message with
the Subject field missing from the headers "can't happen." Unfortunately, they
weren't wise enough to check for this anyway, and OE5 will crash it it receives
such a message. (The Subject header field has to be completely missing, not
just empty.)
Chris
