Re: Rigorously defining the interaction of conditional headers

At 03:36 05/03/98 -0800, Roy T. Fielding wrote:
>[...] However, I cannot believe that the right
>solution is to specify it in unreadable pseudocode -- at least choose
>a language with structure.  It is in fact far less readable than the
>actual code from Apache (and I know that the code works).

I find decision tables are a useful way to analyse such problems.

(My reference is over 25 years old: "Programs from Decision Tables", E.
Humbey, Macdonald/American Elsevier computer monographs, ISBN
0-444-19569-6/0-356-04126-3.  It's probably not still in print.  It does
contain a number of references to decision table articles published in the
1960s in Commications of the ACM:  August 1967, September 1970, January
1966, November 1966, October 1968, January 1965, February 1964, June 1970,
November 1965, June 1965, February 1971.  All of these pre-date even my
library of "Communications".  Strangely, I'm not aware of any more recent
references.)

GK.
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Graham Klyne

Received on Thursday, 5 March 1998 12:17:32 UTC