>> there are exceptions -- e.g., files with newlines in their name
> I honestly find it extremely bewildering that any programmer would see that as being acceptable. It's not just that it fails to give the correct result, it fails silently. Silent data corruption is surely just about the worse class of bug.
Yes! We should strive to build our software on solid, non-leaky abstractions as much as possible, so that exceptions like a filename with an odd character in it just don't exist. Until we reach that point, computers will continue to frustrate their users for no good reason.
> I honestly find it extremely bewildering that any programmer would see that as being acceptable. It's not just that it fails to give the correct result, it fails silently. Silent data corruption is surely just about the worse class of bug.
Yes! We should strive to build our software on solid, non-leaky abstractions as much as possible, so that exceptions like a filename with an odd character in it just don't exist. Until we reach that point, computers will continue to frustrate their users for no good reason.