I think it makes sense the way it's currently implemented. What boardsize does to the board is undefined and I think it makes sense for it to remain undefined.
One might argue for a single board_size command that functions as both, and I would be alright with that but it shouldn't be called "boardsize". It should be something like reset_board with an argument indicating boardsize.
- Don
On Sunday 17 July 2005 4:24 pm, Chris Spencer wrote:
Gunnar Farnebäck wrote:
The reason to introduce clear_board was that it seemed silly to be clearing the board as a side effect of setting the boardsize. It would have been an option to still require boardsize to also clear the board but I thought it made more sense to have those commands orthogonal. In part this is also a symmetry with not requiring the board to be empty at startup, which is useful when you can specify an initial position externally (in the case of GNU Go as a command line option).
Only the only problem I see with this rationale is that I can't think of a situation where I would resize the board without clearing it. Resizing the board without clearing results in a board with an essentially meaningless piece arraignment. Is there really a useful case where you would resize the board but wish to save the positions that weren't truncated as a result of the resizing?
I agree that it's intuitive to have a clear_board command. However, not clearing the board after a resize seems unintuitive to me.
Sincerely, Chris Spencer
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