Steve Samson wrote:
Um, Steve, "reenterable" was the original word circa 1964.

Interesting. I didn't know that. I joined IBM in 1968
and I seem to recall reentrant being the common tongue
then and reenterable used later.

-Steve Comstock


Some IBM
dockie circa 1970 thought that that looked too complex and found the word "reentrant" in a dictionary. Unfortunately, he or she did not read the definition. "Reentrant" meant a closed curve that had at least one concave segment, i.e. it re-entered itself. "Reenterable" means a program that is capable of being re-entered without compromising data integrity. The -able suffix is the essence of the word.

A program that is re-entrant according to the strict definition is one that spontaneously re-enters itself. We call such behavior a loop.

/<rant>

Steve Comstock<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:


Well, when you are learning Assembler, the work to write reentrant (I, too, prefer that term to the relatively new-fangled "reenterable") can get in the way of focusing on simply how the instructions work and how to string together series of instructions to accomplish specific tasks.



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