Otto, > I think it is interesting. As for the incompatibilites, my memory says > I followed the original dc and bc when deciding on those (GNU chose to > differs in these cases). Bit it has been 18 years since I wrote the > current versions, so I might misrememeber.
I think that makes sense to me. Unfortunately, when I was building my dc, I couldn't find any mention in the OpenBSD man pages, which I used to ensure as much compatibility as I could, that arrays and registers were not separate. Well, there was one (the `;` command mentions registers, but the `:` command does not, so I thought that was a typo). Regarding the 0 having length 0 or 1, that was a decision I agonized over. My dad, who is a mathematician, said that it could go either way. Unfortunately for me, if this is a showstopper incompatibility (and it might be based on how the test suite uses `length()` and `Z`), I do think I would keep it as it is and accept that OpenBSD will not want my bc(1) and dc(1). > As for moving to your version, I have no opinion yet. I have some > attachment to the current code, but not so strong that I am opposing > replacement upfront. OTOH the current implementaion is almost > maintainance free for many years already. So I dunno. You have a right to have attachment to it; I have attachment to mine! In fact, I was pleasantly surprised at how clean and readable your code was. I usually struggle to read code written by others, but I could easily read yours. On that note, since last night, I thought of more disadvantages of moving to my bc and dc, which I feel I must mention. More disadvantages: * The current dc(1) and bc(1) are from a known member of the OpenBSD community with many contributions. I am an unknown quantity. * The current dc(1) and bc(1) do not have ugly portability code that OpenBSD probably doesn't care about. * The current dc(1) and bc(1) do not have ugly code to support build options that OpenBSD does not care about. * The binary size of the OpenBSD dc(1) and bc(1) combined are 78% the size of mine combined (on amd64). The size of OpenBSD combined is 145440, and the size of mine combined are 185706. * The current dc(1) and bc(1) have much less source code and have been nearly maintenance-free for many years. Mine were started in 2018 and do not have as long of a track record for being low maintenance. > I'll take a look at your code soon and maybe other devs have opinions. Thank you very much! Gavin Howard
