From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 8777 invoked by alias); 20 Jan 2003 02:11:13 -0000 Mailing-List: contact mauve-discuss-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: mauve-discuss-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 8747 invoked from network); 20 Jan 2003 02:11:12 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO piglet.dstc.edu.au) (130.102.176.1) by 172.16.49.205 with SMTP; 20 Jan 2003 02:11:12 -0000 Received: from dstc.edu.au (soluble.dstc.edu.au [130.102.176.43]) by piglet.dstc.edu.au (8.12.3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id h0K2Asfh007156; Mon, 20 Jan 2003 12:10:54 +1000 (EST) Message-Id: <200301200210.h0K2Asfh007156@piglet.dstc.edu.au> To: abies@pg.gda.pl cc: mauve-discuss@sources.redhat.com, crawley@piglet.dstc.edu.au Subject: Re: 600+ BigDecimal tests In-Reply-To: Message from Artur Biesiadowski of "Mon, 20 Jan 2003 02:21:16 +0100." <3E2B4F0C.7010205@wp.pl> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 02:11:00 -0000 From: Stephen Crawley X-Virus-Scanned: Message: ok X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.9 (www dot roaringpenguin dot com slash mimedefang) X-SW-Source: 2003-q1/txt/msg00009.txt.bz2 > Stephen Crawley wrote: > > > BTW. Has this question been debated / decided in the past? The reason > > I ask is that application code may rely on exception message strings to > > discriminate exception cases. IMO, this is a BAD THING (tm), but in some > > cases, the application programmer may have little choice. > > This is doomed to failure from very start. Exception strings generated > by system should be localized (so they can be shown to user in worst > case). So there is no way to write language-portable program which looks > at details of exception messages. True ... but this doesn't stop programmers doing this kind of thing out of ignorance or desperation. Still, I'm convinced that there is little value in busting a gut to get identical exception messages. -- Steve