C & undefined behaviour - was Re: tumble under BSD

Mouse mouse at Rodents-Montreal.ORG
Sun Apr 3 20:32:43 CDT 2016


>> (Please don't use paragraph-length lines.)
> Why not?  Is your email client incapable of wrapping text?

No; it just assumes that - if the text is not marked as reflowable -
that it shouldn't mangle it by inserting line breaks that weren't there
in the original.  It is obnoxious to have a long line (say, a compile
line quoted from make output) mangled into illegibility by
gratuitiously inserted line breaks; it is perhaps even worse to have
multiple short lines pasted together by gratuitously deleted line
breaks.  Each of those behaviours is broken.  (When applied to text not
marked reflowable, that is.  If the text is marked reflowable, then
either behaviour is fine - but such text needs to not only be marked
but be wrapped in accordance with the format=flowed spec.)

I can, of course, rewrap text no matter how it's marked, just as I can
undo rot13, translate from EBCDIC, etc - but, as with those, it's an
additional step and thus impairs readability.

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