Characters that can be used in an array key

[Richard Gaskin]

Dar Scott wrote:

 > I am not advocating doing away with arrays.  I am advocating doing
 > them right.  This "feature" (bug) should have been fixed before
 > arrayEncode() was created, immediately before if not well before.

Back in the olden days when people still used Usenet, there was a 
lengthy thread in comp.sys.mac.hypercard in which Christopher Watson of 
the SuperCard team and Kevin Calhoun of the HyperCard team debated 
almost to the point of fisticuffs the approach each team took toward 
language enhancements.

Calhoun's position was that the HC team felt it was very important to 
get a feature absolutely right before rolling it out, that the syntax 
had to have a good feel to it and the feature itself be complete.  He 
noted that many times the team was willing to hold off on a feature 
until it met their standards.

Watson's position could be summarized as, "Yeah, but we ship."

;)

HyperCard died three years later, while SuperCard is still being 
enhanced to this day.

Software that's been around long enough becomes a collection odd stories 
that explain the many anomalies it will possess.  It doesn't correct 
them, just explains them.

I believe array support in MetaCard predates the Unicode standard.

I agree that the current situation is less than ideal, and indeed 
NULL-terminated strings are the bane of many programmers who now find 
themselves faced with Unicode.

So it goes.

I know many deep changes are occurring throughout the code base to 
accommodate Unicode ever better.  I'd be surprised if this isn't one of 
them, but there's such a long list it may take a while to address.

Software is a complex business, even on short-lived products.  The only 
thing more complex is to be successful enough to survive until your data 
structures become obsolete by new standards. :)

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
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