Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!eecae!dsacng1!dsacg1!dsacg3!vfm6066
From: vfm6066@dsacg3.UUCP (John A. Ebersold)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: friendly messages
Message-ID: <1369@dsacg3.UUCP>
Date: 2 Mar 89 18:29:14 GMT
References: <435@laic.UUCP> <955@auspex.UUCP> <9218@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <5734@bsu-cs.UUCP> <90507@sun.uucp> <259@celerity.UUCP> <4970@xenna.Encore.COM> <1069@auspex.UUCP> <2849@osiris.UUCP> <1089@auspex.UUCP>
Reply-To: vfm6066@dsacg3.UUCP (John A. Ebersold)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Defense Logistics Agency Systems Automation Center, Columbus
Lines: 26

In article <1089@auspex.UUCP> guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) writes:
>>The consensus seems to be (correct me if I'm wrong.. :-) that error
>>messages should say just enough to please the user and no more.
>
>Yes.  However, one gets the impression that some programmers have a
>quite bogus idea of how much this actually is - often bogusly small.

Yes, like printing errno, instead of the error message.

On a releated topic...

How many times has anyone heard (or said) something like.  "I'm not checking
the return value becuase I can't do anything about it anyway."

To me, this is not true.  You can always print a message that says:

Horrible error in program foo, function bar, the function bletch returned a
-1 on about line x.

I'd rather have this than a mysterious failure.

-- 
John A. Ebersold  at  Defense Logistics Agency   osu-cis!dsacg1!dsacg3!vfm6066  
Unify Corporation     System Automation Center   Columbus, Ohio 1-614-238-5923
Me?  Speak for anyone else?  Don't be ridiculous!                  AV 850-5923
Systems with poorly understood requirements cannot be developed in a crunch.