Re: core dump with svn r6178

--- Greg Stein <gstein@lyra.org> wrote:
> It isn't just Subversion. APR, APRUTIL, and Apache httpd also use this
> convention. "Give me good inputs, or I'll crash." The crash is actually
> quite nice because we can use a traceback to figure out the codepath
> which
> contains the problem.

Indeed. Some people (like Bertrand Meyer) go to great lengths to convince
people to code this way. You have his design by contract -- if you
promise to call my routine with the precondition satisfied then I, in
return, promise to deliver a final state in which the postcondition is
satisfied. Then you have his non-redundancy principle -- under no
circumstances shall the body of a routine ever test for the routine's
precondition.

If you violate the precondition then get can expect bad things -- like
core dumps.

Of course all this assumes the contract with the user is clearly spelled
out.

Michael

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Received on Fri Jun 20 00:00:16 2003