Re: bind()
Norman Diamond wrote:
> "Eugene Gershnik" <gershnik@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>
>> and to document everything (it is not Win32 standard).
>
> Well now we have a huge disagreement. Lots of people including
> Microsoft employees and others DO think that MSDN is the Win32
> standard (and .Net standard etc.).
Well, they are wrong. There is a huge difference between standards like
POSIX, various RFCs, C++ language and informal API description like Platform
SDK or .NET SDK portion of MSDN.
Standards are quasi-legal documents. They spell in detail what MUST, MAY or
SHOULD (to use one popular naming scheme) be supported. You can validate a
given implementation against a standard and decide whether it conforms. When
an implementation behaves differently from a standard it is usually
considered an implementation bug. (There could be bugs in a standard too but
this usually means that no reasonable implementation is possible)
Now compare this with Win32. MSDN simply sort of describes what it does.
There are no constraints on what Win32 must, may or should do. MS can drop,
add or modify any feature tomorrow and this would simply be the new Win32
rather than non-conformant behavior or extension. When Win32 behaves
differently from MSDN it is usually a bug in MSDN rather than Win32.
The real Win32 "standard" is a kind of Platonic ideal
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_idealism) that exists in the heads of
programmers at MS and elsewhere. It is *partly* described in MSDN but that's
it.
> This is how they judge whether a
> program is properly depending on documented behaviour, improperly
> depending on undocumented behaviour, or other.
Partially. You *infer* the ideal from the MSDN and validate against it. Note
the infer part. In general to get an undestanding of what can be relied on
you need to read the MSDN, check the existing practice, look at the history,
compare with other OSes etc.
> Anyway, if MSDN isn't the Win32 standard (and .Net standard etc.)
> then what is?
See above.
> You want to increase the amount of chaos instead of
> reducing it?
Not sure what you mean by this.
--
Eugene
http://www.gershnik.com
.
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