Oh, are they here? It’d be fascinating to hear from them.
Alternatively, perhap, that hostile tone is suggesting I’m personally unqualified to interpret loosely framed questions? I suppose, since I’ve only been doing it for a few decades, I’m definitely a novice by any standard, and my tendency to observe and follow up on anomalous, incomplete, subtly conflicting, or otherwise inexplicable requirements by investigating both the timeline and substance of the original context, and the apparent motivations and outcome preferences of the author, is sheer beginners luck, and any uptick in stakeholder utility that from time to time accompanies amending recommendations following such investigative and analytical activity a sheer coincidence! So that must be it - as you can probably tell from all this smug, empty bravado, I’m really just sharing pure speculation, wild guesswork, total fluke, impertinent leaps of inferential faith, only just grasping at the vague outline of my own blind spots et cetera et cetera, and consequently yes, I’d love to hear the original intent restated from the horse’s mouth, too; but, for the meantime, I’ll read the tealeaves, systematically analyse and synthesise to the best of my ability, describe and discuss any substantive points of comprehension that I think might help enrich, or at any rate challenge, a reader’s perspective (including my own), and cross my fingers hoping to read, mark, and inwardly digest what new understanding or revealed wisdom as I can - even when it comes, as it has there and here, via diacritical allegory and dialectical hellfire.
Or, finally, if you just want the TL;DR version, the reason I feel unshakeably comfortable asserting that the question author's actual purpose is normalising a nonconforming document into XHTML, by balancing open & close tags, is because they said so.
It's in an answer comment about halfway down the first page.
> "Can you provide a little more information on the problem you're trying to solve"
"Determining all the tags that are currently open, then compare that against the closed tags in a separate array"
If that's not enough, here are quotes from their other questions, posted in the minutes and hours prior:
"How to balance tags with PHP", and
"I need to write a function which closes the opened HTML tags."
Sometimes, we just have to bother reading what's in front of us.
I have to ask, is this series of comments some kind of performance art or some sort of social experiment? Or is this unironically how you write/speak/act?
> Sometimes, we just have to bother reading what's in front of us.
You are making an absolutely great example of that. I was absolutely not talking about the original SO post, but about the generally extremely entitled answers which assume the existence of a very specific X to the Y of a post.
If I understand correctly, you're suggesting "Who are you" wasn't directed at me personally, "the person" wasn't referring to the OP but all possible authors, and "the question" wasn't referring to, well, the original SO question at hand, but the class of all possible questions.
If so, then I see, I think: perhaps it was more intended as "Who is anyone to know the purpose and utility (of a question) better than the person who asks that question?"
I can't answer that, since I agree with the sentiment. I'm only really pondering this one specific question, made possible because there's so much extra context with which to interpret the original text. My personal hubris doesn't generalise to the class of all possible questions, and I'd struggle to sympathise with anyone making such an ambit claim.
> If I understand correctly, you're suggesting "Who are you" wasn't directed at me personally, "the person" wasn't referring to the OP but all possible authors, and "the question" wasn't referring to, well, the original SO question at hand, but the class of all possible questions.
yes, exactly ? but maybe it is less common to speak in such a general way in english than in my mother tongue
It is a form in English, example idiom might be, “the man in the street”, which in general relates “anyone in any street” and thereby simply means “ordinary people”.
The potential for confusion arises when we’re already talking about a particular person, and he’s outside on the road.
Who are you to know the purpose and utility better than the person who asked the question ?