[fpc-pascal] New feature: IfThen() intrinsic

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Mon, 1 Feb 2016, Maciej Izak wrote:

> 2016-02-01 10:17 GMT+01:00 Michalis Kamburelis <michalis.kambi at gmail.com>:
>>
>> As far as I understand, compatibility is not broken: new IfThen was
>> deliberately introduced as part of the System unit, that is implicitly
>> always used as the 1st unit. If you use Math (or StrUtils or any other
>> modules that provide IfThen implementations), they will "cover" the
>> System.IfThen definition. So your code will continue to work as it was.
>>
>> And the name like FpIfThen look rather ugly, actually. As far as I'm
>> concerned, IfThen sounds simple and Ok.
>
>
> IfThen is not ok. It can potentially break compatibility. The probability
> is huge. IfThen is in many cases the only function that is used from Math
> or StrUtils. I have big codebase to maintain which is refactored very
> often. The risk to omit Math and StrUtils is very big.

This is not an argument.

If you take this as an argument, then the system unit is set in concrete,
for fear of breaking someones code whenever something new is introduced.

>
> It can be very hard to debug.
>
> There are so many ways to implement this and was chosen the worst scenario.
> :\

>From my point of view, Sven took the best possible route by making it an
identifier of the system unit. The refactoring argument is nonsense, as it
applies to ANY identifier, not just this one.

We can discuss IIF or IfThen, but the same applies for IIF.

Michael.