Re: Rationale for split-string?

[Jerry James]

Luc Teirlinck <address@hidden> wrote:
> I am not going to respond to the essence of your statement, since it
> does not have any.  (It is just emotional stuff, it has no rational
> content.)  I just want to point out that I am not an official
> spokesperson for Emacs.  I represent my own opinions, not those of
> Emacs or "the Emacs developers".  Any "Evil Intents" you seem to be
> attributing to Emacs and the Emacs developers are strictly and
> completely my own personal Evilness.

You have to realize that I'm an academic, Luc.  I asked the questions I
asked, not to accuse or belittle anybody, but as an exercise in the
Socratic method (perhaps a poor one, but that's another discussion).  If
you reread my last message with that in mind, I think you will see that
the case is the opposite of what you assumed: it is all rational
content; none of it is emotional.  Let me summarize the main points I
wanted to make:

1) Some of the resistance to changing Emacs' split-string function is
   coming from people who are worried about breaking existing code.

2) XEmacs has not changed the split-string function (except in the
   development version, which is where we noticed the test breakage that
   prompted all this).

3) Emacs changed the split-string function, somewhere after version 20.1
   was released, and before 20.4 was released.

4) If no code broke at the time, then we have nothing to worry about,
   because no code at all notices the difference.

5) If some code broke, then knowing which code it is that broke is
   relevant to this discussion; hence the question about the existence
   of emacs-devel archives.

The thought of anyone having any kind of evil intent never crossed my
mind.

Regards,
-- 
Jerry James
http://www.ittc.ku.edu/~james/