Re: Tetrits and "stickiness"
Nate Hayes replying to Ian McIntosh replying to RBK:
> >> Do we need both the sticky part and the non-sticky part? (RBK)
> > I don't think so, if we handle it carefully. (IM)
> I agree with you, Ian. (NH)
Careful here. What Ian said was that some programs care about the
sticky part, and some care about the details of the last operation,
but rarely would a program care about both AT THE SAME TIME.
In fact, programs DO care about both, at SEPARATE times. A common
situation is a fast path that expects no exceptional cases, but
checks this assumption with a sticky check at the end so as to
repeat the routine using a slow but thoroughly-checked sequence.
Now, this could be supported by a *mode* (preferably local to each
operation) that requests either details or stickiness -- but it may
be easier always to provide both. This could perhaps be left as an
implementation choice.
Michel.
---Sent: 2010-04-15 19:04:33 UTC