Bug on Python2.3.4 [FreeBSD]?

Donn Cave donn at u.washington.edu
Mon Aug 15 13:10:10 EDT 2005


In article <mailman.3053.1123936311.10512.python-list at python.org>,
 "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
...
> If there is a hole in the standard, 'innovation' is required.

I hope this perspective is a rarity.  When you exploit an opportunity
to make something work differently while conforming to the existing
standards, you're creating the kind of problem standards are there
to prevent.  In the end I don't care if my software works because
someone followed the standards to the letter, or because someone took
the trouble to follow existing practice whether it was codified in
a standard or not, I just don't want it to work differently on one
platform than on another.  Holes in standards are at best an excuse
for accidental deviations.

In the present case, so far I see a strong Berkeley vs. everyone
else pattern, so GNU C probably wasn't the culprit after all.
Along with already documented FreeBSD, I find MacOS X, NetBSD 2
and Ultrix 4.2 position the read stream to EOF.  Linux, AIX and
DEC/OSF1 (or whatever it's called these days) position it to 0.

   Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu



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