comp.lang.idl-pvwave archive: archive » Warning: IDL 8.0 alters the behaviour of existing valid programs without any notice!

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Re: Warning: IDL 8.0 alters the behaviour of existing valid programs without any notice! [message #72231 is a reply to message #72181]

Fri, 20 August 2010 14:57

Chris[7]
Messages: 4
Registered: August 2010

Junior Member

> Crashing is not a bug, if that's what you want your program to do in
> certain cases. So, a program can be bug-free under IDL 7, yet
> buggy when run under IDL 8.

I guess so. Though it sounds a little perverse to my ears to say that
you "want" your program to crash. They do call it "crashing", after all...

I understand the frustration at the unexpected side effect of IDL
allowing negative array indices (otherwise a great feature, yes?). But
I'm still inclined to blame the end user for writing vulnerable code.
Even if the code is "bug-free" in IDL7, it was still weak code for not
checking for pathological cases. IDL8 removes the safety net.

It doesn't seem like good practice to explicitly rely on a programming
language to crash whenever it detects a potential coding mistake. There
are plenty of other instances where bad code yields unexpected results,
but IDL doesn't say anything -- like dividing 2 integers and expecting a
float.

chris

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[Message index]

		Warning: IDL 8.0 alters the behaviour of existing valid programs without any notice! By: svhhaugan on Wed, 18 August 2010 04:59
		Re: Warning: IDL 8.0 alters the behaviour of existing valid programs without any notice! By: Chris[7] on Fri, 20 August 2010 14:57
		Re: Warning: IDL 8.0 alters the behaviour of existing valid programs without any notice! By: Karl[1] on Fri, 20 August 2010 09:44
		Re: Warning: IDL 8.0 alters the behaviour of existing valid programs without any notice! By: svhhaugan on Fri, 20 August 2010 04:42
		Re: Warning: IDL 8.0 alters the behaviour of existing valid programs without any notice! By: Timm Weitkamp on Tue, 24 August 2010 14:15

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