Creating anonymous functions using eval

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 12 Jul 2005 17:17:46 -0600, Joseph Garvin wrote:

> Robert Kern wrote:
> 
>>Not everyone is reading this list in a conveniently threaded 
>>form
>>  
>>
> Why not? Just about every modern newsgroup reader and e-mail app has a 
> threaded view option.

Technology as a substitute for manners is it?

I have a modern newsgroup reader. I don't like threaded views, but even
if I did, that's not the point. News servers sometimes drop posts, or the
posts expire. Sometimes news readers lose posts (that just happened to me
yesterday). Sometimes threading breaks. Quoting enough of the previous
post to establish context is the only sensible behaviour in the face of
all these potential problems.

But even that is not the point.

It is rude for people to assume that their post is so vitally important to
me that I'll drop what I'm doing to hunt back through past posts searching
for context. Even if that search is "back one post in the thread", that's
still one post too many.

In the face of that breach of manners, people may choose to respond in
many ways. Some might choose to reward the rudeness by searching previous
posts, then responding with an answer to the question. Some might choose
to just ignore the post, which has the disadvantage of leaving the
original poster no wiser and likely to repeat his behaviour. Some might
flame them, which is usually counterproductive. And some might drop some
fairly heavy hints, but that assumes the poster is capable of getting a
clue.


-- 
Steven.