Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
On Mon, 13 Apr 2015 10:22:40 -0700, Sam Siegel wrote: Agreed. There are good and bad on both sides of that line. This reminded me of something that Phil Payne wrote several years ago. Hope you find it amusing. Tom Marchant Subject: Re: (OTR) Fixing the user From: Phil Payne s390n...@isham-research.demon.co.uk Reply-To: ibm-m...@bama.ua.edu Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 12:45:13 GMT Content-Type: text/plain In message 369c3cff.d48e0...@ase.com.au ibm-m...@bama.ua.edu writes: Howard's invitation to throw some light into the dark world of User Discipline stirred me from my slumbers... Ok, see if any of you sysprogs(sp) recognise this little piece of telephone dialog with your favourite development programmer (dp): sp:Hello dp:What did you change in the operating system yesterday? And why didn't you tell us! As vendor SEs will tell you, sysprogs are no better. Indeed, the privileges available to them and an inflated idea of their own ability often make them worse. I got a call one morning in early 1984. At the time, I was the regional VS1 specialist. Someone had to do it. Anyway, the customer sysprog complained that the machine had started running slow over the weekend. What did you change - Nothing. We all know the exchanges. I redlined to the site, and wandered down to the computer room to meet this guy and his boss. And _his_ boss. Why has your machine suddenly slowed down - it's almost unusable? On the way in, I noticed five strings of 3350s wrapped in plastic and awaiting transport. Casting around the computer room, I saw 3375s. When did you change the disks? - Yesterday evening. So you regenned the operating system? - Yes, but we didn't change anything. You _were_ on Release 4, and it doesn't support 3375s. - We just put a Release 6.0 DLIB on, but we didn't change anything. After a couple of hours, I couldn't actually point to anything they _hadn't_ changed. The real reason for their problems was that they had changed releases of Adabas - in dumping and reloading the main invoice database, they'd screwed up randomisation such that every single record had gone into the overflow chain. Don't ever try and tell anyone who's worked for a vendor that sysprogs are invincible. -- Phil Payne -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
It's like one of the hardware networking guys telling me that the router tables can't be corrupted. This happened right after they applied a router firmware/software fix, my reply 'say what' On Monday, April 13, 2015, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) shmuel+ibm-m...@patriot.net wrote: In 552bc59e.1010...@vse2pdf.com javascript:;, on 04/13/2015 at 09:33 AM, Tony Thigpen t...@vse2pdf.com javascript:; said: Ed must work for the government, or a union shop. No place I ever worked would have allowed such programmers to continue to be employed. I've seen them in commercial, educational and government shops, but Ed failed to address two significant questions: 1. What percentage is like that? 2. Is the percentage any higher for applications than for systems. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu javascript:; with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
In 985915eee6984740ae93f8495c624c6c2368d57...@jscpcwexmaa1.bsg.ad.adp.com, on 04/13/2015 at 09:21 AM, Farley, Peter x23353 peter.far...@broadridge.com said: Please get off that ridiculously high systems programmer horse of yours and join us here in the 21st century. You almost had me their, but it seems that you are Ed; it is no more valid to assume that all systems programmers are alike than to assume that all applications programmers are alike. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
In 552bc59e.1010...@vse2pdf.com, on 04/13/2015 at 09:33 AM, Tony Thigpen t...@vse2pdf.com said: Ed must work for the government, or a union shop. No place I ever worked would have allowed such programmers to continue to be employed. I've seen them in commercial, educational and government shops, but Ed failed to address two significant questions: 1. What percentage is like that? 2. Is the percentage any higher for applications than for systems. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
I may not have stated that as I meant it - I did try to indicate my meaning by using that . . . horse *of yours* . . ., intending to mean just him and not all. Not well written, mea culpa, but it was a rant. I have encountered other systems programmers of that type throughout my career, but by no means are all systems programmers like that. Some have even been friends. The general attitude towards all application programmers that he displayed just p***ed me off, and sometimes I let that get out when I should probably hold my (virtual) tongue. Peter -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) Sent: Monday, April 13, 2015 10:28 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC In 985915eee6984740ae93f8495c624c6c2368d57...@jscpcwexmaa1.bsg.ad.adp.com, on 04/13/2015 at 09:21 AM, Farley, Peter x23353 peter.far...@broadridge.com said: Please get off that ridiculously high systems programmer horse of yours and join us here in the 21st century. You almost had me their, but it seems that you are Ed; it is no more valid to assume that all systems programmers are alike than to assume that all applications programmers are alike. -- This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
On Apr 13, 2015, at 4:16 PM, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote: In 552bc59e.1010...@vse2pdf.com, on 04/13/2015 at 09:33 AM, Tony Thigpen t...@vse2pdf.com said: Ed must work for the government, or a union shop. No place I ever worked would have allowed such programmers to continue to be employed. I've seen them in commercial, educational and government shops, but Ed failed to address two significant questions: 1. What percentage is like that? 2. Is the percentage any higher for applications than for systems. -- We had our fair share of application ninnies. We also had some very sharp programmers that were at the top of the food chain so to speak. We never heard out of the sharp ones till we upgraded to a 168MP and all of a sudden their online system stopped working well. Their code didn't allow for an update of a wait between instructions. We had the listing all over the console and were stepping through it and some systems guy chimed in you have to change it to a CS instruction as there is a timing issue. We had to hand them a POPS so they could read about the new instruction (this was in the 70's). Once we handed them we never heard from them again. Of the other two groups we had been invaded by a consulting company of questionable morality (The came in one sunday and IPL'd one of the machines and tried to hide it (I will explain if you request)) I had caught them and almost got them booted out of the door but alas they had us by the proverbial short hairs so upper management had to look the other way. The less than bright programmer I was talking about worked for our company (not the consulting company) and was less than average. As to hard numbers it varied so much as the consultants had their fingers I will guess 20 programmers in one group and that broke down to some pretty sad programmers to 2 or 3) The other group had about 10 and they were just that typical programmer types just average. As to systems people we were lean and held the number down to a bare minimum say 10 although we did get an additional body (dead weight) as the personnel manager loaded us up with her son over several objections. We had 1 deadweight 1 who thought he ran the place which was a surprise to his boss. 2 extremely bright IBM types and SE and a PSR both were full time. All in all we were a lean group. All our MVS people were maybe 6. This was for several MVS machines (168MP 3033 etc) We had some old DOS people around but it had been phased out several years ago and they went with them. We also had a sysprog working in Amsterdam but as soon as we put them online as RJE user he came back and left the company after being gone for 2 or so years. We went for 7070 to 7090 to 360 to 370 SVS and then MVS in a short amount of time. We had been written up as star IBM user of 7070 (Before my time) . Ed -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
On Apr 13, 2015, at 6:01 PM, Farley, Peter x23353 wrote: I may not have stated that as I meant it - I did try to indicate my meaning by using that . . . horse *of yours* . . ., intending to mean just him and not all. Not well written, mea culpa, but it was a rant. I have encountered other systems programmers of that type throughout my career, but by no means are all systems programmers like that. Some have even been friends. The general attitude towards all application programmers that he displayed just p***ed me off, and sometimes I let that get out when I should probably hold my (virtual) tongue. Peter Peter: I always had more or less good interactions with sysprogs as well except at one place these people used to split hairs like you wouldn't believe. I was asked to get the LE parms that the CICS people wanted. I sent an email to them requesting the information and was hopped all over as I shouldn't have given them the basic LE parms it was up to them to tell us exactly what they wanted. Another time a sysprog got in a screaming match over the name of a cobol library that comes with CICS. I was not comfortable working in that environment and I was happy to get out of it. Ed -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
Agreed. There are good and bad on both sides of that line. On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 10:06 AM, Graham Hobbs gho...@cdpwise.net wrote: Seconded. All the business systems in the world seem to work just fine so they must have been written by systems programmers:-D On 2015-04-13 9:21 AM, Farley, Peter x23353 wrote: Sorry for this rant but I just had to step in on this conversation. That is the most hoary, antiquated, and prejudiced set of statements about application programmers that I think I have ever seen you make. I remember making stupid mistakes when I was a junior programmer and needing to ask for the systems programmer's help, but to bring up that dumb 0C7 example is just dredging up ancient history of application programming people as they MAY have been but were never ALL alike. In my experience, most of the COBOL application programmers who are left working today (and I must admit there are fewer and fewer of us every day) are both reasonably bright and very experienced in using the tools that earn them their living. Do they know the latest CS paradigms and theories? Not always (some do!), but they can program the daylights out of a business application need, and get it done on time and with high-quality regression testing done too. Knowing how to use COBOL FUNCTION intrinsics to translate text to or from ASCII or any other code page is not rocket science, it is just normal business programming. Please get off that ridiculously high systems programmer horse of yours and join us here in the 21st century. Peter -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Ed Gould Sent: Sunday, April 12, 2015 11:46 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC Ze'ev: Because in most cases programmers are less than lets say bright. If you bring up ASCII you will only confuse them. I suspect they will try and use it in some sort of horrendous fashion, like convert to ASCII and then back. To give you an idea how stupid programmers can be a S0C7 turns into a tech support issue as the system said it was a 0C7 so it is a systems issue. Thats how bad some programmers are. Ed -- This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
Somehow strange discussion, IMHO. I´'m sure that there are many bright people in the COBOL community. But: COBOL could well be some sort of biotope for not so well teached programmers. And: most significant software packages on the mainframe that do complicated algorithms and computations (math, fast table lookup etc., other non-trivial tasks) are written in other languages, for example PL/1, ASSEMBLER, C ... at least that's my observation. Some of my customers don't use COBOL, that is, they forbid the use of COBOL. Today's COBOL, of course, has some modern language elements and might well be different from the 1980s COBOL. But: what language elements does the average COBOL programmer use? My overall point is: this is not a mainframe topic (there are many bright people on the mainframe scene, at least as much as on any other platform), but a COBOL language topic. Kind regards Bernd Am 13.04.2015 um 06:21 schrieb Ze'ev Atlas: Because in most cases programmers are less than lets say bright. Oh, I see... I guess that this is why my rate when I program in lowly Access VBA is higher then anything COBOL programmers could get. I am not even trying to compare that to my rate when I write Perl, T-SQL, PL/SQL, etc. They just assume that if I agree to program in COBOL. I must be, in your words, Less than bright. And that also explain why, by at large, there are not too many takers to the regular expression functionality that I promote in the COBOL world. What a sad statement. ZA -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
On Sun, Apr 12, 2015 at 10:46 PM, Ed Gould edgould1...@comcast.net wrote: Ze'ev: Because in most cases programmers are less than lets say bright. If you bring up ASCII you will only confuse them. I suspect they will try and use it in some sort of horrendous fashion, like convert to ASCII and then back. To give you an idea how stupid programmers can be a S0C7 turns into a tech support issue as the system said it was a 0C7 so it is a systems issue. Thats how bad some programmers are. Gee, Ed, do you know Walter? I got just that argument from him back in the 1970s. System abend - System problem. We were converting from DOS to VS1. He had the same problem, data exception, in the DOS version. Which printed the message: JOB TERMINATED DUE TO PROGRAM REQUEST (as I recall). He brought the source code to the DOS sysprog and yell at him: Just show me the code that asked for my job to be terminated! Ed In today's mainframe world, most programmers, at least in the U.S., think CP037 is the only EBCDIC code page. Unless they use z/OS UNIX, then IBM-1047 becomes the one true EBCDIC. And many think that Windows ASCII (CP-1252) is the only real ASCII encoding. Luckily, at least on the ASCII front, more programmers seem to be starting to know about UTF-8. plugEspecially Linux programmers /plug -- If you sent twitter messages while exploring, are you on a textpedition? He's about as useful as a wax frying pan. 10 to the 12th power microphones = 1 Megaphone Maranatha! John McKown -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
Ze'ev Atlas wrote: Why is getting an ASCII piece of information so scary? And why would handling it using proper programming, any scary? Simply, if you receive data, say x'0A0B0CF1F2F3', then how would you see, programmatically, it is ASCII or EBCDIC? With TRT or friends? I had to avoid a surprise 0Cx abend or having endure GIGO. (Garbage In Garbage Out) Of course, when all foundations are set right, and you get your data in whatever format as expected, then I have no problem handling ASCII or EBCDIC. Nothing scary at all with proper programming. Groete / Greetings Elardus Engelbrecht -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
In 2355787451595524.wa.elardus.engelbrechtsita.co...@listserv.ua.edu, on 04/13/2015 at 04:41 AM, Elardus Engelbrecht elardus.engelbre...@sita.co.za said: Simply, if you receive data, say x'0A0B0CF1F2F3', then how would you see, programmatically, it is ASCII or EBCDIC? That isn't an ASCII issue, it's a part of the issue of dealing with undocumented data formats. As such, you need a kind word and a 2x4. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
Sorry for this rant but I just had to step in on this conversation. That is the most hoary, antiquated, and prejudiced set of statements about application programmers that I think I have ever seen you make. I remember making stupid mistakes when I was a junior programmer and needing to ask for the systems programmer's help, but to bring up that dumb 0C7 example is just dredging up ancient history of application programming people as they MAY have been but were never ALL alike. In my experience, most of the COBOL application programmers who are left working today (and I must admit there are fewer and fewer of us every day) are both reasonably bright and very experienced in using the tools that earn them their living. Do they know the latest CS paradigms and theories? Not always (some do!), but they can program the daylights out of a business application need, and get it done on time and with high-quality regression testing done too. Knowing how to use COBOL FUNCTION intrinsics to translate text to or from ASCII or any other code page is not rocket science, it is just normal business programming. Please get off that ridiculously high systems programmer horse of yours and join us here in the 21st century. Peter -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Ed Gould Sent: Sunday, April 12, 2015 11:46 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC Ze'ev: Because in most cases programmers are less than lets say bright. If you bring up ASCII you will only confuse them. I suspect they will try and use it in some sort of horrendous fashion, like convert to ASCII and then back. To give you an idea how stupid programmers can be a S0C7 turns into a tech support issue as the system said it was a 0C7 so it is a systems issue. Thats how bad some programmers are. Ed -- This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
amen, Peter. Ed must work for the government, or a union shop. No place I ever worked would have allowed such programmers to continue to be employed. Of course, on second thought, I have seen some really, really bad stuff coming out of the code-mills in India and China. Tony Thigpen Farley, Peter x23353 wrote on 04/13/2015 09:21 AM: Sorry for this rant but I just had to step in on this conversation. That is the most hoary, antiquated, and prejudiced set of statements about application programmers that I think I have ever seen you make. I remember making stupid mistakes when I was a junior programmer and needing to ask for the systems programmer's help, but to bring up that dumb 0C7 example is just dredging up ancient history of application programming people as they MAY have been but were never ALL alike. In my experience, most of the COBOL application programmers who are left working today (and I must admit there are fewer and fewer of us every day) are both reasonably bright and very experienced in using the tools that earn them their living. Do they know the latest CS paradigms and theories? Not always (some do!), but they can program the daylights out of a business application need, and get it done on time and with high-quality regression testing done too. Knowing how to use COBOL FUNCTION intrinsics to translate text to or from ASCII or any other code page is not rocket science, it is just normal business programming. Please get off that ridiculously high systems programmer horse of yours and join us here in the 21st century. Peter -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Ed Gould Sent: Sunday, April 12, 2015 11:46 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC Ze'ev: Because in most cases programmers are less than lets say bright. If you bring up ASCII you will only confuse them. I suspect they will try and use it in some sort of horrendous fashion, like convert to ASCII and then back. To give you an idea how stupid programmers can be a S0C7 turns into a tech support issue as the system said it was a 0C7 so it is a systems issue. Thats how bad some programmers are. Ed -- This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
Seconded. All the business systems in the world seem to work just fine so they must have been written by systems programmers:-D On 2015-04-13 9:21 AM, Farley, Peter x23353 wrote: Sorry for this rant but I just had to step in on this conversation. That is the most hoary, antiquated, and prejudiced set of statements about application programmers that I think I have ever seen you make. I remember making stupid mistakes when I was a junior programmer and needing to ask for the systems programmer's help, but to bring up that dumb 0C7 example is just dredging up ancient history of application programming people as they MAY have been but were never ALL alike. In my experience, most of the COBOL application programmers who are left working today (and I must admit there are fewer and fewer of us every day) are both reasonably bright and very experienced in using the tools that earn them their living. Do they know the latest CS paradigms and theories? Not always (some do!), but they can program the daylights out of a business application need, and get it done on time and with high-quality regression testing done too. Knowing how to use COBOL FUNCTION intrinsics to translate text to or from ASCII or any other code page is not rocket science, it is just normal business programming. Please get off that ridiculously high systems programmer horse of yours and join us here in the 21st century. Peter -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Ed Gould Sent: Sunday, April 12, 2015 11:46 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC Ze'ev: Because in most cases programmers are less than lets say bright. If you bring up ASCII you will only confuse them. I suspect they will try and use it in some sort of horrendous fashion, like convert to ASCII and then back. To give you an idea how stupid programmers can be a S0C7 turns into a tech support issue as the system said it was a 0C7 so it is a systems issue. Thats how bad some programmers are. Ed -- This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
On Apr 13, 2015, at 8:33 AM, Tony Thigpen wrote: amen, Peter. Ed must work for the government, or a union shop. No place I ever worked would have allowed such programmers to continue to be employed. Of course, on second thought, I have seen some really, really bad stuff coming out of the code-mills in India and China. Tony Thigpen I did manage to get the consultant fired but it did take 6 or so months. Funny thing he left to get a better paying job at a local newspaper. Ed -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
Ze'ev: Because in most cases programmers are less than lets say bright. If you bring up ASCII you will only confuse them. I suspect they will try and use it in some sort of horrendous fashion, like convert to ASCII and then back. To give you an idea how stupid programmers can be a S0C7 turns into a tech support issue as the system said it was a 0C7 so it is a systems issue. Thats how bad some programmers are. Ed On Apr 12, 2015, at 1:25 AM, Ze'ev Atlas wrote: to summarize the conversation: I don't know what is scarer letting ASCII loose in the environment or letting programmers know about it. Not to alarm you further, but I believe it's already endemic. Not in any company I have ever worked. Why is getting an ASCII piece of information so scary? And why would handling it using proper programming, any scary? So how would the companies you work for prevent the need? What would you do if you cannot allow FTP to do the conversion when there is a mix of alphanumeric characters and binary information? ZA -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
Because in most cases programmers are less than lets say bright. Oh, I see... I guess that this is why my rate when I program in lowly Access VBA is higher then anything COBOL programmers could get. I am not even trying to compare that to my rate when I write Perl, T-SQL, PL/SQL, etc. They just assume that if I agree to program in COBOL. I must be, in your words, Less than bright. And that also explain why, by at large, there are not too many takers to the regular expression functionality that I promote in the COBOL world. What a sad statement. ZA -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
to summarize the conversation: I don't know what is scarer letting ASCII loose in the environment or letting programmers know about it. Not to alarm you further, but I believe it's already endemic. Not in any company I have ever worked. Why is getting an ASCII piece of information so scary? And why would handling it using proper programming, any scary? So how would the companies you work for prevent the need? What would you do if you cannot allow FTP to do the conversion when there is a mix of alphanumeric characters and binary information? ZA -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Standard IBM Enterprise COBOL Service to convert ASCII to EBCDIC
Thank you all to those who've pointed me to NATIONAL-OF and DISPLAY-OF intrinsic functions. For some reason I missed them when looking at the list of intrinsic functions. While calling the C runtime library is an interesting exercise, using native COBOL functionality when in COBOL is superior. ZA -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
