tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) (04/07/89)
Sorry not to get to this earlier, but I've been busy.
Statements I made to the effect that lists with no cells tend to cause
system crashes were false. I have gone back to my current code and
modified it to create an original rectangle of (0, 0, 1, 0), and to
happily delete the last cell instead of just clearing it. I have yet
to experience a problem, and my code is now slightly simpler as a
bonus.
Thanks to those of you who led me to put this assertion to the test.
I can only assume that one of two things happened to create this
error. First, superstition. When I started using the List Manager
three years ago, I had quite a few problems, some of which did seem to
be caused by bugs in the early versions. (The other developers I was
working with confirmed that they had encountered similar bugs in the
original Mac Plus List Manager PACK 0.) Possibly this was not a bug
even then, but somehow empty-celled lists interacted with some other
bug in my code to produce a problem, and since switching over to
always-one-cell lists fixed it, I jumped to the conclusion that this
was a bug in the List Manager. This kind of superstition is
unfortunately rather common in computers, among both users and
programmers. Second possibility: it really was a bug way back then,
but it has since been fixed.
Let this anecdote spring to mind when it seems everyone on the net
thinks you're wrong. They just may be right....
--
Tim Maroney, Consultant, Eclectic Software, sun!hoptoad!tim
"Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth: Now hear
another: he has written all the old falshoods.
And now hear the reason. He conversed with Angels who are all religious, &
conversed not with Devils who all hate religion..."
- Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"