Re: [Nmh-workers] The function, void admonish (char *what, char *fmt, ...)

[norm]

David Levine <address@hidden> writes:
>Norm wrote:
>
>> It seems to me (it's been decades since I programmed in C) that
>> admonish does very little for programmers, except induce them to
>> issue frustratingly ambiguous (sometimes dangerously ambiguous)
>> error messages; that directly calling advertise would be very little
>> extra trouble and would avoid that inducement. I'm not suggesting a
>> wholesale elimination of all 89 present calls to admonish. I'm
>> merely suggesting that admonish be deprecated via an appropriate
>> comment, in error.c, just above admonish.
>
>admonish() tacks the "continuing..." string onto whatever it
>passes along to advertise().  That's all it does.
>
>Calling advertise() would be no extra trouble.  But I don't see
>your point.  Is "continuing..." not always appropriate?
>
>If there are dangerously ambigous warning messages, they'll have
>to be fixed one at a time.  Suggestions welcome :-)

I don't know if any the continuing..." messages are dangerously ambiguous, but 
almost all of them are frustratingly ambiguous. Most of them complain that 
something is wrong with some message, component or something. But they rarely 
are very explicit about what, if anything, will be done about the offending 
object.

As I encounter them, I will make suggestions, or at least say what I think is 
ambiguous. Other people should too.


    Norman Shapiro