Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utcsrgv.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!dave From: dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman) Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: Re: _print/_doprnt; curses on sys III Message-ID: <4561@utcsrgv.UUCP> Date: Mon, 18-Jun-84 08:36:23 EDT Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.4561 Posted: Mon Jun 18 08:36:23 1984 Date-Received: Mon, 18-Jun-84 09:22:03 EDT References: <148@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> <1973@utcsstat.UUCP> <4558@utcsrgv.UUCP> <1101@wateng.UUCP> Reply-To: dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (& Sherman) Organization: The Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto Lines: 24 In article <1101@wateng.UUCP> ksbszabo@wateng.UUCP (Kevin S. B. Szabo) writes: ~| Dave, I'm sorry but I and many others (I hope), don't agree. The program ~| implementation is worse that unportable, it is unmaintainable. Sure, ~| the author can maintain it and will probably continue to keep it humming ~| perfectly on many systems. But if he/she ever leaves and someone has to ~| a) fix the code because of an internal, supposedly transparent change to stdio; ~| or b) port the code to a machine with a totally reworked stdio; the ~| maintainer will have to spend many unecessary hours trying to find all the ~| hidden dependancies on an undocumented internal system routine. Besides, two ~| lines of code is a small price to pay for clarity, portability and ~| *maintainability*. Two points: 1. Good documentation will avoid the portability problems. I am clearly documenting in my code exactly what the v7-stdio dependency is. 2. "two lines of code is a small price to pay..."? Not when two lines would have to be used for every printf in a source file which has a lot of printfs, escpecially during the development phase. Dave Sherman -- {allegra,cornell,decvax,ihnp4,linus,utzoo}!utcsrgv!dave