| Programmer's Reference for the BIC Volume IO Library | ||
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In order to use this library, one must become accustomed to certain subtleties of style, some of which are peculiar to the author of this software and some of which have evolved in ways dependent on history of the software. Therefore, it is important to note the following style-related issues, for which no apologies are forthcoming.
The philosophy that global variables are generally a bad idea has been adopted. In many cases, using global variables within functions hides the behaviour of a function, and therefore, it is preferable to specify all relevant information to a function in the argument list, rather than relying on any global variables. Secondly, modification of a global variable by a given function precludes the use of this function in a multi-threaded environment (two processes may attempt to modify the global variable at the same time). As a result of adopting the anti-global variable philosophy, the user of the BIC Volume IO Library often must specify many arguments to a function. This seems a small price to pay, in return for the ability to see all factors controlling the behaviour of each function in the argument list.
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