Why version() ?

[Walter Bright]

Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> And when the rats nest MUST be created?  Why make it more painful?  I'm sure 
> if Hans Bohem could write it in a clearer fashion he would have.

Hans is in a trap with it. If he reengineered it, he very likely would 
break many platforms, and he does not have those platforms and has no 
way to test. The code is very brittle, and it would take a lot of guts 
to try and reorganize it.

The hbgc is a collection of code submitted by many, many people.


> The same arguments could be said about actual if statements in code, yet you 
> have no qualms not forcing people to combine their logic into boolean 
> variables before using an if statement.

It's not the same, because versions tend to slice through whole programs 
in an unstructured manner, while garden variety if statements are 
structured and local.