parameter checking

[Nigel Wetters]

I guess this is a question about coding style. For the past few days, I've been stupidly passing zero values to construct gamma distributrions, when the library assumed it would never be passed a zero value. I'm obviously at fault here, but I would have found the problem a lot quicker with a bit of help from the libraries.

If a function expects parameters within certain bounds, should those parameters be checked, or is it the user's responsibility to check bounds before calling a function?

Nigel Wetters
Research Fellow, Epidemiology Unit
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine