Erik Bourget writes: > You know, intense as this whole argument is, the fact remains that DWIM > is no substitute for proper documentation.
Let's see, the documentation says vaddaliasdomain original alias. If you do what the documentation says, it works. If you reverse the arguments, it still works. It would be nice to document that the arguments can be either way around but it is not strictly necessary. > Patching software to accept every possible 'first-guess' input isn't > just sloppy, it's unmaintainable. But the point is that most people's first guess is the opposite way around, therefore the software was badly designed. And, as somebody else already pointed out, no matter which way you expect it to work, it works exactly as before: if both domains exist it was an error before and is an error now. If neither domain exists it was and error before and is an error now. If one domain exists and the other does not then an alias is created. It is impossible to do anything wrong with the proposed change in place tha you cannot do wrong with the existing code. In fact, the proposed change eliminates one possible error: that is misremembering what order the arguments should be in because you use ln a lot. That's not sloppy, that's good ergonomics. >From all the complaints, anyone would get the impression that the change forces everyone to do things differently. It does not and you can continue to use it the way you always have. From all the complaints, anyone would think that the change introduces a new error that you can make. It does not and it is impossible to do anything wrong that you could not do before. From all the complaints, anyone would get the impression that making software easier to use while retaining full backward compatibility is a bad thing. "Waaaaaah. Big bad man force me to use new software that can be used in ways I disapprove of. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah" "Is he also holding a gun at your head to force you to use it that way?" "No, but I disapprove in principle of software being easy to use and get all twisted and angry inside that somebody else is using it the easy way while I'm doing it the hard way to show my machismo." If the preceding paragraph is not your position then please give some THOUGHT as to why you believe it is such an awful change. If you have anything more plausible than it will add a couple of lines of code and will divert a few person-minutes of programming resources then feel free to share them. Here's a tip for you: if you state a broad general principle without justifying it and showing that it is actually applicable to this situation, I'll show exectaly why you're wrong as I just did with your "DWIM is no substitute for proper documentation." -- Paul Allen Softflare Support
