Re: Leading Zeroes in PF

Ancillary to this subject:  

I've been working with three major payment vendors that want to send us
payments electronically.   They have been working for WEEKS now, trying
to create a file of data I can FTP and use containing  Signed Numeric
numbers as outlined in a COBOL record layout.    It appears they have
been unable to do this because they are working in a Windoz or Unic
environment and these data types are unheard of.  

Another vendor I worked with more than a year ago built their data for
me from a mainframe and built a first successful data file in a few
days.

Ah, the Science of Computer Science is gone and we have Bill and the
Universities(Our bastions of higher learning) to blame for it.   

Its my firm belief that when the World moved toward the PC and to some
extent Unic in such an all embracing way, true advancements in Computer
Science slowed considerably while those OSs are trying to catch up to
where the mainframe and midrange (AS/400, etc.) were in the beginning of
the 1980's.    This in the areas of dependability, security, governance
and more.

Sorry all, I just had to vent to a professional audience that might
understand.

Geeze,

Dave