[Monotone-devel] Re: Workspace commands and automate/stdio

[Lapo Luchini]

Thomas Keller wrote:
>> It may (?) be a faster "intermediate" solution, but seems a little too
>> brittle to be the "real" solution, to me.
> What would be a non-intermediate solution for you?

It is probably a personal little idiosyncrasy but I consider "brittle"
kinda everything that involves "parsing strings", especially so if those
strings were made "for humans".

What to suggest?
At the moment, I know pretty much *nothing* about basic_io, so I'm not
in the position to actually suggest anything, but if strings must be,
I'd use *fixed* strings, more in the realm of "FILE_NOT_FOUND[%s]" than
"The file '%s' was not found or is not readable".

And using gettext for strings that must be both easily parsable and
consistent over time, mhh.... just feels wrong.
gettext is a wonderful library for translation of human-oriented
strings, but I wouldn't use it for computer-oriented strings.
Mhh, no, that's not exact: I wouldn't use strings at all, if not
oriented to humans; I'd use something closer to a (int error_id, string
reason) or a (string exception_name, string message).

But, again, I know too little of basic_io and my current idea of it is
mostly based on "heard of" and suppositions, so I should had rather not
wrote about it :P

    Lapo

PS: ARGHHH!!! "I should had rather not wrote about it" is out of reach
of my English skills, correct me if it was wrong :P