- From: Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@yahoo.com>
- Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 07:11:38 -0700 (PDT)
- To: "Kay, Michael" <Michael.Kay@softwareag.com>, public-qt-comments@w3.org
--- "Kay, Michael" <Michael.Kay@softwareag.com> wrote: > > > > The functions max(), min(), and avg() are defined to accept a > > first argument of type: > > > > xdt:anyAtomicType* > > > > On the other side, asking for the maximum, minimum or the > > average of an empty sequence clearly doesn't make sense. > > Other programming languages also require that the argument of > > max should be a non-empty list (e.g. Haskell's prelude.hs) > > > > The type of the first argument of these functions must be: > > > > xdt:anyAtomicType+ > > > > We debated whether to do this, and decided that min() and max() of an > empty > sequence should return () rather than being an error. This is consistent > with the general approach to handling of (), and is easier on the user > given > that we have no try/catch capability to make errors non-fatal. Trying to find the max(), min() or avg() of an empty sequence is a very significant logical error that must be corrected by the programmer -- it should be a fatal error. Such a decision does not solve any problem. It creates new problems. See for example other comments in this list: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-qt-comments/2003Oct/0064.html ===== Cheers, Dimitre Novatchev. http://fxsl.sourceforge.net/ -- the home of FXSL __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com
Received on Saturday, 11 October 2003 10:16:45 UTC