[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#3450) square_iterate and unreal positions

["Jason Short" <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Raimar Falke wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 26, 2003 at 08:55:12PM -0800, rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> 
>>>>>>>This is bad. 
>>>>>>
>>>>>>This is religion. It has nothing to do with correctness or
>>>>>>robustness which is all that should be of concern here..
>>>>>
>>>>>Ok. I rephrase this to "square_iterate should be able to catch errors
>>>>>which are made by others parts of the code and not conceal the
>>>>>errors."
>>
>>There are no errors.
> 
> 
> What happens if we have a piece of code at the server side which
> doesn't check the map position of an incoming packet. This map
> position (it may be normal, real or non-real) is than passed to
> square_iterate. We won't notice it since square_iterate without the
> assert will conceal it.

Then either:

- The position will be used somewhere, in which case the bug will be caught.

- The position will not be used, in which case the "bug" isn't harmful 
anyway.

> You are correct that the error is not in square_iterate. However this
> testing should be done in square_iterate.

Not at the cost of breaking other, legitimate code.

jason