OpenEuphoria

Re: Bug in new get()?

• Posted by Jason Gade <jaygade at y?h?o.com> Aug 17, 2007
• 548 views

Okay, I'm writing a stub to test your new get.e with regards to sanity.ex, so I
can fix sanity.ex.

And I'm looking at your docs. I don't quite understand them and I have a change
suggestion.

Your docs say:
    get() returns a 4 element sequence, like value() does:
    a status code (success/error/end of file),
    the value just read (meaningful only when the status code is
    GET_SUCCESS), 
    the number of characters read, 
    the number of leading whitespace characters. 

I'm getting a bunch of 1s, -1s, or 0s for the last two elements. In fact I'm not
getting any other values.

Are these really useful return values? Maybe a different function to read those
last two numbers would be better (state kept in a file variable of course)?

Plus your comment at the top of Get2() doesn't seem to reflect reality: you say
that Get2() will return a 2-element sequence unless record_whitespace flag is
set. Get2() seems to return 4 elements regardless.

I would see more value in returning (in this order) "success or failure",
"sequence of interest", "sequence containing invalid characters until next valid
character (not read)" and "total characters read". And probably not even that, as
I would prefer to see it separated from get(). get()'s pointer, of course, would
point to the next valid character.

So the optimal situation in my opinion would be to leave get() returning a
two-element sequence as now, but add get_leading_whitespace_count(),
get_chars_read(), and get_last_invalid(). Obviously, those names suck, but the
point still stands.

Same for value().

--
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple
system that works.
--John Gall's 15th law of Systemantics.

"Premature optimization is the root of all evil in programming."
--C.A.R. Hoare

j.