On 2013-10-21 16:31, John Gilmore wrote: > PL/I was robbed of FIXEDOVERFLOW for binary fixed values. It is still > available for PL/I decimal fixed, i.e., packed decimal values. > > ... > > This a is a pity, a disagreeable consequence of the fact that much > PL/I implementation machinery is now shared with C; ... > Truly a pity because reporting fixed overflow is entirely compatible with the ANSI specification of C. I suspect some of the motivation lies in LE library routines which carelessly generate fixed overflow, smugly expecting it will be ignored, and which programmers lack the ambition to correct.
Likewise, IBM's C some time ago made the invalid dereferencing of NULL behave as a reference to "", in deference to pervasive misusage. -- gil
