On Sun, 4 Aug 2013 09:00:02 +1000, Wayne Bickerdike wayn...@gmail.com wrote:
LOL, Didn't say it was my hands! Have you heard me play the violin?
Been playing 50 years and still awful.
Even worse than Jack Benny? :-D
-jc-
In 51fe9ebe.8060...@valley.net, on 08/04/2013
at 02:34 PM, Gerhard Postpischil gerh...@valley.net said:
English has more homonyms than other languages I know, and it is
imprecise; it could be improved by introducing gender specific
articles
That would open several other cans of worms. Also,
[mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.)
Sent: Monday, August 05, 2013 10:23 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: COBOL ? - emulating recursive PERFORM statement
In 51fe9ebe.8060...@valley.net, on 08/04/2013
at 02:34 PM, Gerhard Postpischil gerh
All of the romance langhuages, Latin dialects, have a default gender
where the distinction is made, which is not always the case.
In Italian, which is the closest of them to Latin, 'the victim' is
always la vittima, feminine, regardless of that victim's sex. Or
again, 'the dog' is by default il
In
cae1xxdhuxauskeet8gxeqafkouhpqyy2jc4ttghxd0qk9b+...@mail.gmail.com,
on 08/04/2013
at 03:17 PM, John Gilmore jwgli...@gmail.com said:
In fact, in my experience anyway, context almost always
clarifies what is meant. The ambiguity is formal, not substantive.
There is enough substantive
In 8136429985448566.wa.paulgboulderaim@listserv.ua.edu, on
08/04/2013
at 03:34 PM, Paul Gilmartin paulgboul...@aim.com said:
... any number of users? Or any number of virtual machines?
In VM a CP user and a virtual machine are equivalent. Besides, adding
the users of an OS in a virtual
Shmuel wrote:
| There is enough substantive ambiguity
| to enrich the legal profession.
and I think not. There is, however, much language that can be argued
to have a meaning different from that its speaker/writer intended,
particularly when that language is wrenched out of its context.
The
On 8/5/2013 4:25 PM, John Gilmore wrote:
and I think not. There is, however, much language that can be argued
to have a meaning different from that its speaker/writer intended,
particularly when that language is wrenched out of its context.
Frequent road sign: $100 FINE FOR LITTERING
So if I
In
cahtjz9lnigefbhka_xvptk9rg6xp9hunna8snjqxnpyovdm...@mail.gmail.com,
on 08/03/2013
at 10:17 AM, Wayne Bickerdike wayn...@gmail.com said:
Personally, I wish C had never seen the light of day and PL/I had the
place of COBOL.
AOL. You are me.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and
In 4899683233769357.wa.paulgboulderaim@listserv.ua.edu, on
08/02/2013
at 11:11 PM, Paul Gilmartin paulgboul...@aim.com said:
OK. s/reentrant/sharable/, in the sense that the segment containing
the CMS nucleus be shared among many Virtual Machines.
CMS is designed to have a static
In
CAHtJz9J_1gzPgLDAOi=p9+agnuk=gRDx-iBdeG_+v6F_Ew=8...@mail.gmail.com,
on 08/03/2013
at 05:21 PM, Wayne Bickerdike wayn...@gmail.com said:
Generally, the more PL/I like a language is, the better I like it.
The original if flawed assertion that COBOL was English like
Made sense only to
I suspect that English, or indeed any natural language, is a basket
case for the unambiguous specification of an executable program.
The notion of making COBOL English-like has the effect of making it long-winded.
The whole idea of making programming 'easy' needs to be discarded.
There was a
On 8/3/2013 at 12:11 AM, Paul Gilmartin paulgboul...@aim.com wrote:
OK. s/reentrant/sharable/, in the sense that the segment containing
the CMS nucleus be shared among many Virtual Machines. I believe
nothing similar can be done with the z/OS nucleus. Perhaps I'm
wrong; can it be done?
On 8/4/2013 10:28 AM, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote:
Admittedly the phonetic spelling isn't, and there are a lot of near
synonyms, but basket case seems to be overstatin the case? How is
English worse than, e.g., Frisian, German, Romance languages, Semitic
languages, Slavic languages?
The
Gerhard Postpischil wrote:
begin extract
The worst problem with English is that words are overloaded (according
to one estimate I saw, there are 13 meanings per word on average).
/end extract
This is certainly a problem for English-like programming languages.
In other contexts it is helpful.
On Sun, 4 Aug 2013 12:21:38 -0600, Mark Post wrote:
There is support built into the Linux kernel to create a Named Saved System
(NSS) of itself when booting. (NSS is proper term here, since you can issue
an IPL command against an NSS, which you cannot do with a DCSS (DisContiguous
Saved
On 8/4/2013 at 04:34 PM, Paul Gilmartin paulgboul...@aim.com wrote:
And here, I'm not up to speed on my jargon. Since I can say,
CP IPL CMS, does that mean CMS is a NSS? I had always
thought of it as a DCSS.
CMS is indeed an NSS, not a DCSS.
After that gets saved to spool, any z/VM guest
I managed to ignore this thread completely based on its subject. However I
hovered over Waynes post, and the intrigue started.
Quick check confirmed the normal suspects were involved.
I am largely language ambivalent - tool for the job predominantly. However
given my situation where I am
If I ever praised COBOL, I must have had a gun to my head at the time!
Generally, the more PL/I like a language is, the better I like it. The
original if flawed assertion that COBOL was English like explains a
lot. English is a basket case of a language.
Sampai jumpa lagi!
On Sat, Aug 3, 2013
On 3/08/2013 3:21 PM, Wayne Bickerdike wrote:
If I ever praised COBOL, I must have had a gun to my head at the time!
You must be feeling suicidal in your old age mate! Didn't you say I
look at COBOL like my old violin, ancient technology but still hard to
beat in the right hands?
LOL, Didn't say it was my hands! Have you heard me play the violin?
Been playing 50 years and still awful.
However, PL/I is my fiddle...
On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 5:46 PM, David Crayford dcrayf...@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/08/2013 3:21 PM, Wayne Bickerdike wrote:
If I ever praised COBOL, I must have
I am not sure that I know exactly what a generic sort function is.
As will come as no surprise to readers of my posts, I greatly prefer
PL/I to C; and in PL/I; generic is a compile-time facility.
The compiler sorts out SQRT(signed halfword binary iinteger) and
SQRT(IEEE decimal float extended),
In
CAE1XxDFcxy3Q2+8S84Qu2tyH9wrnyyT0g6Ni6s-=9wrd+em...@mail.gmail.com,
on 08/01/2013
at 05:50 PM, John Gilmore jwgli...@gmail.com said:
What seems to have fallen through the cracks in this [tangential]
discussion is that the use of code-modification schemes, ALTER and
the like, in a routine
In 0853231378493523.wa.paulgboulderaim@listserv.ua.edu, on
08/01/2013
at 06:30 PM, Paul Gilmartin paulgboul...@aim.com said:
One might imagine restoring reentrancy by making the alterable
fragments pointers into obtained storage.
Or serializing when it matters. But such code is usually
On 2/08/2013 8:37 PM, John Gilmore wrote:
I am not sure that I know exactly what a generic sort function is.
As will come as no surprise to readers of my posts, I greatly prefer
PL/I to C; and in PL/I; generic is a compile-time facility.
Here's a good generic sort function
In 26cb4209-8779-4a1a-b05e-07d1a46dc...@comcast.net, on 08/01/2013
at 11:56 PM, Ed Gould edgould1...@comcast.net said:
Since none of them knew assembler getting called at 0 something
in the morning to debug assembler wasn't an option.
That's not much comfort if they call you at 0 dark
I don't think you are really interested in how a qsort-like procedure
is implemented in PL/I, and I am not at all open-minded about the
relative merits of C and PL/I.
I do, however, want to make one final comment on your last post.
Compile-time binding is not a 'trick'. It is preferable to
Aww, it was getting interesting. Not been the same since the days of
Ali and Frazier.
Personally, I wish C had never seen the light of day and PL/I had the
place of COBOL.
On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 4:06 AM, John Gilmore jwgli...@gmail.com wrote:
I don't think you are really interested in how a
Make up your mind Wayne. It's was only a couple of weeks ago you sent me email
praising COBOL!
On 03/08/2013, at 8:17 AM, Wayne Bickerdike wayn...@gmail.com wrote:
Aww, it was getting interesting. Not been the same since the days of
Ali and Frazier.
Personally, I wish C had never seen the
On Fri, 2 Aug 2013 09:35:23 -0400, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote:
on 08/01/2013 at 06:30 PM, Paul Gilmartin said:
...
Or serializing when it matters. But such code is usually harder to
maintain.
Almost as bad as code-modification is the use in C of function
pointers in structs.
You mean an
On Sat, 3 Aug 2013 10:17:42 +1000, Wayne Bickerdike wrote:
Aww, it was getting interesting. Not been the same since the days of
Ali and Frazier.
Personally, I wish C had never seen the light of day and PL/I had the
place of COBOL.
The entry path problem: If I could get a PL/I compiler for the
On 3/08/2013 12:27 PM, Paul Gilmartin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2013 10:17:42 +1000, Wayne Bickerdike wrote:
Aww, it was getting interesting. Not been the same since the days of
Ali and Frazier.
Personally, I wish C had never seen the light of day and PL/I had the
place of COBOL.
The entry path
In a886260d-5074-45c1-8d41-c50f481fe...@comcast.net, on 07/31/2013
at 10:38 PM, Ed Gould edgould1...@comcast.net said:
Programmers HATE altered GOTO's
Unless they're ALTER kockers (-;
It might be smart programming
FSVO smart.
but the debugging can (and is) a PITA.
When the debugging is a
Programmers HATE altered GOTO's
I hated them 35 years ago. Hopefully they were never used in new code after
that.
Bob Shannon
Rocket Software
--
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to
Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On
Behalf Of Bob Shannon
Sent: Thursday, August 01, 2013 1:38 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: COBOL ? - emulating recursive PERFORM statement
Programmers HATE altered GOTO's
I hated them 35 years ago. Hopefully they were never used in new code
Sperry used to have a balanced tree search that all compilers and assemblers
used. Very small very fast. Less than 200 lines of code, but used instruction
modification depending on paths taken. Fairly long intro, but we started
getting in some large modeling routines from some of the big labs.
What seems to have fallen through the cracks in this [tangential]
discussion is that the use of code-modification schemes, ALTER and the
like, in a routine makes it non-reentrant.
This in my view is the crucial objection to their use.
--
John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
On Thu, 1 Aug 2013 17:50:10 -0400, John Gilmore wrote:
What seems to have fallen through the cracks in this [tangential]
discussion is that the use of code-modification schemes, ALTER and the
like, in a routine makes it non-reentrant.
This in my view is the crucial objection to their use.
One
On 2/08/2013 7:30 AM, Paul Gilmartin wrote:
On Thu, 1 Aug 2013 17:50:10 -0400, John Gilmore wrote:
What seems to have fallen through the cracks in this [tangential]
discussion is that the use of code-modification schemes, ALTER and the
like, in a routine makes it non-reentrant.
This in my
The problem here is a C -language one. C wots not of function
variables; but it does admit, as a sort of afterthought, of pointers
to functions. This is enormously convenient but highly problematic.
Ritchie realized this; and in his new super-C and super-UNIX this and
many other problems of its
I won't go into my programmers were so dumb that...
We had smart ones too but none of them could do assembler.
We had another rule that the only language that could be used in
production was COBOL.
Since none of them knew assembler getting called at 0 something in
the morning to debug
In 3615b501-9035-49b1-94e0-d07b42e95...@comcast.net, on 07/30/2013
at 03:01 PM, Ed Gould edgould1...@comcast.net said:
That is true but the outlawing of alter goto's have been written in
stone for decades.
At some shops, but I've seen messages here from people at shops where
they are
On Jul 31, 2013, at 7:59 AM, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote:
In 3615b501-9035-49b1-94e0-d07b42e95...@comcast.net, on 07/30/2013
at 03:01 PM, Ed Gould edgould1...@comcast.net said:
That is true but the outlawing of alter goto's have been written in
stone for decades.
At some shops, but
I had a programmer as whether a PERFORM could be recursive. The answer is
No. I even tried to explain why. But he says that if he could do it, it
would save some really messy coding. So I thought that I'd ask here if
anyone has ever heard of a way to do something which would be similar to a
Subject: COBOL ? - emulating recursive PERFORM statement
I had a programmer as whether a PERFORM could be recursive. The answer is
No. I even tried to explain why. But he says that if he could do it, it
would save some really messy coding. So I thought that I'd ask here if
anyone has ever heard
Peter Farley's point, which I took as a given, is correct. Such
programs need to be compiled independently, although they can of
course be batched together with others using process statements.
John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
Given our change control procedures, it would likely not be _allowed_ to
have multiple COBOL programs in a single source member. But I'm not sure of
that. This is a way to have RECURSIVE calls, but now we are getting very
complicated because I'm certain that the programmer will want each separate
Hi everybody,
I tried a simple Factorial function and the two pgms can be found below.
I think a recursive function should not be access outside memory areas,
anyway every parm passed by reference can be accessed.
So, in my opinion, having different sources can be a good solution.
It's not a
John McKown wrote:
begin extract
I'm certain that the programmer will want each separate program to
have equal access to the WORKING-STORAGE of the main routine. Which
means having all, or most, of the WORKING-STORAGE in a COPY book with
the EXTERNAL attribute on all the 01 and 77 levels.
/end
On 7/30/2013 9:27 AM, John Gilmore wrote:
John McKown wrote:
begin extract
I'm certain that the programmer will want each separate program to
have equal access to the WORKING-STORAGE of the main routine. Which
means having all, or most, of the WORKING-STORAGE in a COPY book with
the EXTERNAL
In 51f7e21e.8070...@trainersfriend.com, on 07/30/2013
at 09:56 AM, Steve Comstock st...@trainersfriend.com said:
Yes, that's a very critical issue to face. Most (not all) COBOL shops
I've seen are reluctant to use many of the new facilities
I can see being reluctant to use facilities that
On 7/30/2013 1:02 PM, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote:
In 51f7e21e.8070...@trainersfriend.com, on 07/30/2013
at 09:56 AM, Steve Comstock st...@trainersfriend.com said:
Yes, that's a very critical issue to face. Most (not all) COBOL shops
I've seen are reluctant to use many of the new
Shmuel:
That is true but the outlawing of alter goto's have been written in
stone for decades.
I am and always been for outlawing parts of COBOL that should not
have been allowed in the first place.
Ed
On Jul 30, 2013, at 2:02 PM, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote:
In
on this.
Peter
-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Steve Comstock
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2013 3:57 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: COBOL ? - emulating recursive PERFORM statement
Snipped
Also, the easy stuff gets
, 2013 3:57 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: COBOL ? - emulating recursive PERFORM statement
Snipped
Also, the easy stuff gets adopted early and more widely:
scope terminators
evaluate
larger tables
initialize
LE storage management
LE dates
but not so much LE condition handling
etc
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