On Mon, 5 Mar 2001, Peter Ajamian wrote:
>Excuse me? Unless you're looking at a different CircleMUD source than I
>am (and I'm looking at the the latest CVS revision as of about, oh, 30
>seconds ago) There are several places where NOWHERE, NOBODY, or NOTHING
>is checked in the _stock_ source right before indexing an array with the
>variable that it's checked against. How can you possibly say that
>someone might not be using them?
Just because the official CircleMUD happens to use an array doesn't mean
someone else hasn't rewritten it to use a linked list with pointers or an
SQL database.
>The facts are that they are used as tests before indexing an array, and
>that it is possible for the variables they're tested against to have a
>negative value and still bypass the test.
room_rnum = { NOWHERE, 0 .. top_of_world }
You should never have a -2, -3, -4, etc.
>> We don't honestly want '< 0'
>> anywhere. The mud should use the appropriate NOWHERE/NOTHING/NOBODY
>> constant rather than any negative number.
>
>And with that you run a sore risk of giving a false sense of security
>with the test while still having the possibility of indexing an array
>with the negative number.
I'd like to know where these negative numbers are coming from, personally.
>Also note that setting up a macro for
>IS_NOWHERE()/IS_NOTHING()/IS_NOBODY() will accomplish the same thing
>with the same ease of portability and allow testing for conditions that
>a simple == NOWHERE/NOTHING/NOBODY can't possibly allow for.
I'd imagine the other interesting value of NOWHERE is NULL. I think the
simple test does quite well with that.
>> Anyway, I think the technical arguments on this are sparse and won't hold
>> up to much scrutiny.
>
>Depends who's doing the scrutinizing.
For some reason I envision that as the start of fisticuffs.
>Well, in the past I have seen similar issues lean towards protecting the
>newbie coder from themselves (case-in-point, having a dummy_mob variable
>instead of simply setting it to NULL). Are you now saying that you will
>change that position?
It's very likely someone forgets about dummy_mob (see the mailing list
asking about the warning), it's very unlikely someone gets a room number
return code of -2 without trying. That's what NOWHERE is, a marker.
--
George Greer
greerga@circlemud.org
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