Re: Opinions on getUnsignedWithMin:withMax: semantics?

[Rick Riolo]

Call me repetitive, I guess ;-)...
This seems like another case of 
missing the design for least user surprise.

Several people at UM have been caught out by this
crash when min=max, which as Barry points out,
seems like it ought to just return the min=max value
with probability = 1.

For example, it makes problems (well, inconveniences)
if one wants to allow the min/max to evolve, 
e.g., so the range of possible
values for some variable could endogenously change
from a wide range down to no variation at all.

  - r

Rick Riolo                       address@hidden
Program for Study of Complex Systems (PSCS)
1061 Randall Lab     University of Michigan
Ann Arbor MI 48109-1120
http://pscs.physics.lsa.umich.edu/PEOPLE/rlr-home.html

On Thu, 3 Apr 1997 address@hidden wrote:

> Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 17:30:23 -0700 (MST)
> From: address@hidden
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: Opinions on getUnsignedWithMin:withMax: semantics?
> 
> 
> 
> getUnsignedWithMin:withMax: is a message defined on the
> class UniformUnsigned.
> 
> Call me contrary, but I expected that for the special
> case where both the min and max values are equal, the
> semantics of this message would be to return that value
> ("with probability 1").  In fact, it crashes the app
> (InternalError raiseEvent...) saying that this is not
> allowed.  Well, why not?
> 
> In any case, I think if this behaviour is retained, the
> docs ought to draw attention to it...
> 
> - Barry.
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> | Barry McMullin, ALife Group,               |    address@hidden |
> | Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road,   |  Voice: +1-505-984-8800 |
> | Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA.                   |  FAX:   +1-505-982-0565 |
> | http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~mcmullin           |                         |
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> 
> 
> 
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