From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Should undefined behavior be encouraged in Emacs? Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2011 21:55:14 -0400 Message-ID: References: <4E89124D.8070405@cs.ucla.edu> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15 X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1317693325 2650 80.91.229.12 (4 Oct 2011 01:55:25 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2011 01:55:25 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Dave Abrahams Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Oct 04 03:55:21 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([140.186.70.17]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1RAuE3-0006ne-RR for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 04 Oct 2011 03:55:20 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:57990 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RAuE3-0006F7-F0 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 03 Oct 2011 21:55:19 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:56335) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RAuE1-0006F1-3u for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 03 Oct 2011 21:55:18 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RAuDz-00038U-Jz for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 03 Oct 2011 21:55:17 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([140.186.70.10]:42947) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RAuDz-00038Q-IY for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 03 Oct 2011 21:55:15 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RAuDy-00063B-VS; Mon, 03 Oct 2011 21:55:14 -0400 In-reply-to: (message from Dave Abrahams on Mon, 03 Oct 2011 11:15:23 -0400) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-Received-From: 140.186.70.10 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:144560 Archived-At: > In simple cases such as (goto-char -5), users tend to see what the > behavior is, and are likely to write code that depends on it, even if > it isn't documented. Thus, leaving it undocumented doesn't mean that > we can change it and nobody will notice. If you make it a hard, inescapable error, that won't happen. That is true; this would pressure everyone to carefully make sure not to supply out-of-range arguments. But is that goal really more desirable than the convenience of rounding out-of-range arguments? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/