Re: Highly used programs: any better replacements out there?

In <149.493a1f46.300e5b3b@xxxxxxx>, on 07/19/2005
at 09:33 AM, Bill Fairchild <DASDBill2@xxxxxxx> said:

>Overlooking a reference to an instruction about to be changed with a
>patch

What is at issue is changing a datum that is not an instruction. Such
data typically have more references than instructions do, and the
references are more likely to be unrelated to each other.

>Similarly overlooking a reference to a source code instruction
>about to be reassembled may also cause adverse affects.

Only rarely will changing a literal reference in a source line cause
problems that could have been avoided by reading the code that
referred to that line.

>Clearly the problem here is the overlooking rather than the level of
>atrocity with which the source instruction was coded.

The atrocity lies in the person that did the zap, not in the source
code. The assembler automates handling of literal without problems,
and there's nothing wrong with source code that uses them. The problem
comes in when someone bypasses the assembler in the name of
"efficiency" and steps on his own fingers. It's the equivalent of
putting a copper penny in a fuse box so you don't have to be bothered
with changing fuses.

>There are times when a patch is necessitated because there is no
>source code.

BTDTGTS. That doesn't mean that people should write code on the
assumption that they will lose the source.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
ISO position; see <http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html>
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)

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