At 12:40 AM 8/20/2002 -0400, you wrote:

Kirby writes -

...

If you have just 3 parameters, that's six permutations right there. Four parameters means 4!=24 possible function signatures. No Java programmer want's to provide 24 ways of calling the exact same function with the exact same parameters -- just in different order. That would seem insane.

If there is no good reason, its insane.

If there is a good reason, it's 4 hours work that stands there as long as you want it to. (Or at least until 3.0 comes out). Not exactly like building houses out of soda cans - whatever the hell I mean by that.

Well, perhaps there's an elegant solution out there. In most cases, I think the suggestion to make the operator commutative, regardless of type, simply postpones to case/switch logic to a next level. Whatever the solution, it shouldn't add the overhead of slower speed. As a user, I don't want a programmer bending over backwards to accommodate my ignorance of programming, at the price of giving me slow-moving bloatware ala some Microsoft products.

But as I say, I don't see what the good reason would be if I were working in Java.

Why would you feel different about your user if it were a Java app? Don't you want the same freedoms to pass parameters in any order, no matter what the language? Just curious.

But I do think I know why I would be wanting to accomplish it in my exact circumstances. Will look closer, and back-off of it if it proves truly unwieldy.

Well, you're the ultimate judge in your own exact circumstances. As a general rule of thumb though, I think it's not unreasonable to have clients of a class pay attention to parameter order. They have to think a bit like programmers because they're programming at this point. Kirby