On 6/7/00 9:36 AM, Scott Raney at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> Well, at least you need to know that "ask" and "answer" are just
> stacks, and so opening them causes handlers to be executed. The fact
> that the result is cleared at the end of a handler *is* documented.
>
> As a general rule, you should always check or save the result away in
> the statement immediately following any command that may set it. The
> doc should advise that you do this.
Funny anecdote from back in the olden days of xTalk:
I once knew an xTalk vendor who actually had at least one Beta in which "the
result" was always used as an error-checking mechanism. Always. They had
implemented a change in which every exectuable statement reset the result,
including the act of display it. "Put" and "answer" always reset the result
as they were executed, so while it might have been very thorough there was
no means whatsoever of actualy using it.
The engineers argued that this was somehow "purer" than relying on "the
result" only for some commands but not others. Finally enough Beta testers
complained that sense was restored to the language design.
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World
Multimedia Design and Development for Mac, Windows, UNIX, and the Web
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