Re: odds and ends

[<br...@ph...>]

Daniel J Sebald wrote:

>> No, leading and trailing whitespace inside strings should *not* be 
>> ignored. If the code currently does that, that's a bug.

> You mean "currently doesn't do that", I think.  (I originally framed
> the issue as double negative, but so no other way.)

No.  I meant exactly what I wrote.  If blanks *anywhere* inside the 
delimeters of a string passed to gnuplot get ignored, that's a bug, 
period.

As of the CVS version right now, trailing blanks apparently get ignored 
at least in the Windows version.  That's a bug.  IIRC from the earlier 
discussion, this was found to be an unintentional side effect of the 
intended tolerance towards forgetting the closing quote.  I.e. while it 
makes some sense to interpret

	load 'foo.dem

(note: two trailing blanks after 'dem', but not closing quote) as

	load 'foo.dem'

and strip those invisible blanks, the same is *not* the case for

	load 'foo.dem '

"foo.dem " is a legal (though highly unusual) file name on at least some 
platforms, and it indicates a different file than "foo.dem".  It's thus 
a clear bug if gnuplot can't access that file even though its exact name 
has been passed by the user.

> (Whoever came up with the idea of white space in computer file names?
> Ever list a directory with such files?  It's downright confusing.)

Of course it's confusing.  But that's the way it is.  Water under the 
bridge.