Paul White NZ (4/10/2010)
Tom.Thomson (4/9/2010)
I wish you would pay some attention..blah...blah..blah..No. You failed to answer correctly because you made an incorrect assumption, based on incomplete knowledge. Attempting to wriggle and back-track to somehow blame the explanation is very poor form.
Your rambling and border-line incoherent response above completely fails to address the text you quoted: The explanation perfectly adequately explains why IsUnknown becomes IsUnk. Your whole difficulty arises from an incorrect inference to the meaning of the word 'length' in that explanation. Your view relies on length being applied to the value of numdesc inside the check_expression, as opposed to the maximum length of the type returned by LEFT. No doubt you would prefer the following:
"the IsNull() function will truncate the length of replacement_value to the typed length of check_expression."
yes, that would be an improvement.
And that is precisely the distinction that I regard as pedantic, overly-academic, picky, and ultimately tedious. This is a Question of the Day, not a paper - and your lack of flexibility does you no credit.
I haven't changed what I'm saying. The explanation is incomplete.
You said it was wrong. Now you say it is incomplete. Back-tracking and wriggling.
More clever selective quoting. The line you quote a fragment of is actually
The explanation is incomplete. What there is of it is also incorrect
I, and probably most civilised people regard that sort of deliberate selection of part of a statement to give the impression that something was said that clearly was not said as dishonest and disgraceful. I have said that it is incomplete and incorrect consistently throughout.
...that does seem to be a bit of a retraction from wrong though, doesn't it
Yes. Makes it hard to keep track of what your current position is.
What? You are trying to say that when you change from saying "wrong" to saying "pedantic" that's me changing my position? That's pure drivel. Your position changed, not mind - I agree with neither your original "wrong" nor your later "pedantic".
...I have good grounds to believe it is not documented...more thorough than you've undertaken, I suspect
It doesn't exist because you can't find it? :unsure:
And you are claiming to be psychic now as well? I have not said that it definitely is documented - just that most behaviour is. Read back, and try to respond to what I actually said, rather than what you would like me to have said 😛
[/quote] No I'm not psychic? Where did you pick up that nonsense from? The point you would do well to understand is that if you insist on saying "most behaviour is documented" as if it were an answer to the question whether this particular behaviour is documented you are being downright unhelpful.
Let's be clear about this: I do not care why you got this question wrong. What I do object to is your over-use of strong words like 'nonsense', 'wrong', 'crazy', and 'arbitrary'.
And after this exchange, I don't care what you object to.
It seems as if you think (or hope) others will not question your remarks if you present them as fact using sufficiently over-blown language.
If you think it makes you look smart to be an arch-pedant over the wording of the explanation to a QotD...think again.
If you think it makes you look smart to use the tricks of selective quotation and attributing to people things they have no said that are normally associated with the depths of gutter journalism, then you need to think again.
Tom