Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Shipping bogus code (was: Re: prototypes required ?)
Message-ID: <1990Oct24.164257.20928@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <14164@smoke.BRL.MIL> <2150@lupine.NCD.COM> <27066@mimsy.umd.edu> <2173@lupine.NCD.COM> <27098@mimsy.umd.edu> <1990Oct22.231028.24623@zoo.toronto.edu> <18632@rpp386.cactus.org>
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 90 16:42:57 GMT

In article <18632@rpp386.cactus.org> jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F. Haugh II) writes:
>>Considering the number of things in (to pick purely random examples :-))
>>SVR4 and SunOS 4.1 that clearly were never tested, I fear Chris is being
>>naive.  Would that it were not so.
>
>I think Henry is being equally naive - if a vendor were required to fix
>every last bug prior to shipping a new release, we'd still be running on
>ENIACs...

I don't ask that they be fixed; what I ask is that glaringly obvious bugs
like "tar simply doesn't work" be noticed and documented.  Shipping an
imperfect product is inevitable, but shipping code that could not possibly
have shown any signs of working denotes either complete lack of interest
in the customer or gross carelessness.
-- 
The type syntax for C is essentially   | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
unparsable.             --Rob Pike     |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry