On Thu, 20 Oct 2005, Steve Peters wrote:
> Again, I'd prefer not to be fired. Everything you have written above is
> not an option for the majority of the programmers out there. Also, not
> to helpful if you write your programs in TSO on an IBM mainframe.
In general true, but the cent sign was always part of EBCDIC and even
existed on the old card punch machines. It is these newfangled braces
and brackets that are not available on the 3270 terminal. Of course
you don't need them for PL/I. And BCPL uses $( and $) instead of {
and }, which makes it so much easier to type than these new Pascal and
C languages. Well, Pascal also allowed (* and *) for braces; can't
remember what it used for brackets.
Anyways, just pointing out that this is not a new discussion. :)
Cheers,
-Jan
