[thelist] <cfset> vs <cfscript> for a simple function call

[Buffington, Michael]

This is one of the things I love thelist and evolt for. Jeff and I can have a constructive debate, and we can both state our points of argument without it turning into a flame war, or worrying about offending anyone.

As far as who's right and who's wrong, I think Jeff wins it by playing the almighty documentation card. The documentation says that <cfset> does a certain thing, and that's that. Allaire/Macromedia have always stood by the documentation. If something is undocumented, you can't count on it working in new and upcoming versions, therefore, sticking to the docs is the safest way of avoiding a retooling of applications (even if history proves that retooling is quite common with new versions).

And even though I'm conceding, I don't like it ;), and I probably will continue to do it the lazy way when the need arises, however rare that need may be.

[snip]
Nice to see that I've started an interesting debate :) I actually agree 
with both of you, but I have always felt that the most annoying part of 
ColdFusion was not being able to just call a function without having to use 
a <cfscript> block or something silly like <cfset temp = SomeFunction()>. 
So, in rebellion, I lean towards using <cfset> in the "improper" way.
[/snip]