March 30, 2002
3:52 p.m.
Guido> You've been staring at standards too much, haven't you? The Guido> difference between MUST and SHOULD isn't as clear-cut as most Guido> standards people use them. In the ISO standards world, ``must'' doesn't mean what you probably think it does: should: encouraged, but not required shall: required must: it is impossible for things to be otherwise So, for example, one can imagine describing a function with a Boolean parameter named x by saying something like: If x is true, the result shall be foo. Otherwise, x must be false, and the result shall be bar. -- Andrew Koenig, ark@research.att.com, http://www.research.att.com/info/ark