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A comment on Show HN: UXY – adding structure to Unix tools. Parent comment

Re:Show HN: UXY – adding structure to Unix tools by rumcajz on Monday May 20, 2019 @03:01AM (#19958110)
Postel's principle: By liberal in what you accept... It means that the tool won't crash just because there's weird input.
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Re:Show HN: UXY – adding structure to Unix tools by adrianratnapala on Monday May 20, 2019 @06:00PM (#19965725)
But as written, the definition permits generating the weird output. Which ignores the other arm of Postel's principle.

You could have the format definition forbid these characters; and then in the section about Postel's principle have "If you choose to accept forbidden characters, you MUST treat them as '?'".

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Re:Show HN: UXY – adding structure to Unix tools by wgoodall01 on Monday May 20, 2019 @09:30AM (#19960119)
Isn't it better to crash than to fail silently, possibly storing malformed data?
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Re:Show HN: UXY – adding structure to Unix tools by lioeters on Monday May 20, 2019 @12:31PM (#19962119)
Known as "Fail early, fail loudly".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail-fast

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