/.../ (note, this isn't so different from the stronger type checking and disallowing of equally named local variables - that change broke A LOT of code /.../
On the contrary, they are very different. The difference lies in the benefits and not in the effort to keep old code working. I think the improved error checking is vastly more useful than the avoided dismay over the inconsistency between "is_dir" and "isdir" (or similar naming issues).
/ Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS
Previous text:
2003-01-06 22:58: Subject: Inconsistency.
Ok, is_file was a mistake. The point is still there - there is no reason for them to have different naming. I'm sure there's other examples too though.
In either case, I don't like the idea of a silent fork to fix these issues to later release a "new" Pike. Rather I'd like to see a Pike 8 or what not which might not necessarily be backwards compatible - it's nothing wrong with that per se - major version number == possibly incompatible API with previous versions.
Iff incompatible changes were well documented I think it'd be great in the long run (note, this isn't so different from the stronger type checking and disallowing of equally named local variables - that change broke A LOT of code (just about any larger piece of Pike code I've used has at least one issue like this).
So my vote is that pike 7.5 (ir 7.7) will become Pike 8 where inconsistencies like this can be fixed and documented. Also it should probably include a lot of cleaning up (i.e modules using old module API's updated to use new ones, or even the cmod API and other such things (removing the 'spider' module is something that comes to mind too :-)).
/ David Hedbor