Re: [Gretl-devel] slight inconsistency with strstr truth value
Am 08.03.2018 um 20:04 schrieb Allin Cottrell:
On Thu, 8 Mar 2018, Sven Schreiber wrote:
> Am 08.03.2018 um 10:23 schrieb oleg_komashko(a)ukr.net:
>> It looks like 'if' can evaluate non-empty string
>> alone as 1 but can't evaluate logical expressions
>> with string input
>
> OK, thanks for pointing that out. I tend to think --apart from
> backward-compatibility reasons-- that either stuff like 'if "a"'
> should be banned, or the full logical implications should work as well.
Yep, either we ensure that the result of "if s", for s a string
(literal, variable or expression), is consistently equivalent to "if
strlen(s) != 0", or else we ban this usage as too obscure.
I think my preference would be for the latter, unless there's a
significant compatibility issue.
OK, this is where it might get complicated. Personally I used to do a
check like:
if strlen(strstr("what", "ever"))
but when I discovered that 'if strstr("what", "ever")' worked
the same,
I switched over to this shorter formulation some time ago.
Now I can go through my packages and change it back and it wouldn't be a
major issue. But can we assume (or systematically search) that no one
else has done that?
thanks,
sven