[Tutor] Problems with partial string matching

[Steven D'Aprano]

Josep M. Fontana wrote:

> Sorry about the top-posting. Sometimes it seems that a little
> top-posting might make things easier (I hate to have to go through
> long quotes) but you are totally right, netiquette is netiquette.

To all the people who say "Never top-post", I say never say never -- 
there are exceptions to every rule, except the rule about there always 
being exceptions. But 99% of the time, comments should follow the quote 
they are commenting on, like a conversation:

 > comment
reply

 > comment
reply

The point you make about long quotes is also very important. Having to 
scroll, and scroll, and scroll, and SCROLL through pages and pages of 
quoted text to get to a single comment at the end is very annoying, 
sometimes more annoying than top-posting. I often get so fed up I'll 
give up and move on to the next email -- I have a *lot* of emails to 
wade through, many of them (like this list) are a labour of love and I 
don't get paid a cent for reading them, and if I have to work hard just 
to reach the relevant text, I will often decide that if the sender 
couldn't be bothered trimming his quoting, he obviously didn't think his 
post was worth spending an extra 2 seconds making it readable, so why 
should I spend any extra time reading it?

Failure to trim the quoting down to the parts that are actually relevant 
is equally as thoughtless as needless top-posting. If the delete key on 
your keyboard is broken, then say so, otherwise use it.

End of rant. Thank you.


-- 
Steven