[Top][All Lists]
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [Gnu-arch-users] cygwin support for tla, thoughts
From: |
Stephen J. Turnbull |
Subject: |
Re: [Gnu-arch-users] cygwin support for tla, thoughts |
Date: |
Thu, 30 Oct 2003 12:04:15 +0900 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.1002 (Gnus v5.10.2) XEmacs/21.5 (celeriac, linux) |
>>>>> "Tobias" == Tobias C Rittweiler <address@hidden> writes:
>> Tom, your design sense is generally excellent; can you explain
>> that design decision to us?
Tobias> AFAIK one reason is, because it this way works better for
Tobias> him and his emacs filemanager thingy. At least, he told me
Tobias> so once, probably sarcastically.
It wasn't sarcasm.
This is good design given the infrastructure. In Unix, it's easy to
do (split-string path "/"). With Tom's design, you do
(split-string (last (split-string path "/")) "--")
and now the program knows at what depth you are, simply by counting
the elements of the return value. Similarly, for presentation to
humans, simply (last (split-string path "/")) tells a human exactly
where in the hierarchy you are. The use of Lisp here is deliberate;
even if you never learned any Emacs Lisp, the algorithm is so
straightforward I bet you can tell what those expressions do.
With a .../$CAT/$BRN/$VER structure, on the other hand, the parsing
program needs to know a lot more about arch. This means that
separately written tools will quickly start to constrain the
Arch-itect's options for redesign. Helper programs get complex and
fault-prone; algorithms are abandoned in favor of heuristics.
monkey.el is just one example of such an application.
--
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
ask what your business can "do for" free software.