From: "David A. Black" <dblack@...>
Date: 2005-04-16T03:02:41+09:00
Subject: Re: return_value? [Was: Re: want_object? - possible?]

On Sat, 16 Apr 2005, Mark Hubbart wrote:

> On 4/15/05, Eric Hodel <drbrain@segment7.net> wrote:
>> On 14 Apr 2005, at 22:20, Mark Hubbart wrote:
>>>
>>> The example above, while being very funny, is nothing like what's
>>> being suggested:
>>>  - it's a custom method grabbing absurdly specific external context
>>> information
>>>  - it's using the requested information to do something entirely silly
>>> in it own right
>>> By using this example, it appears that you are trying to say that it's
>>> a slippery slope; from a method telling you whether a return value is
>>> in a position to be used, to a specialized method call which tells you
>>> whether a specific method of a certain class will be called on the
>>> result.
>>
>> I think the (snipped) example was highly illustrative.
>
> Maybe I'm wrong. The code seemed intended to be ridiculous, a parody
> of "what might happen". I mean really, "subsequently_flattened?"? But
> I suppose I might have misjudged.

It's more an example of what would have happened, already, with a
#return_value_used? method -- namely, there would be leakage of
knowledge about the next method call into this method call, which I
think is bad.  Having a facility that tells you whether you are being
succeeded by a call to #flatten is just a minor variant of having a
facility that tells you whether you are being succeeded by another
method call at all.  I used that example, not to warn of unreasonable
uses that might lie beyond a reasonable use, but to bring into sharper
relief the problems that inhere in the whole thing in any form.


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack@wobblini.net