Re: Alpha to Numeric converion issue

Sad but true Jim.

There's a "Make it work the way it should" compiler option still in place on the old COBOL compiler which defaults to No. We had to tell the customer the original bug fix was done for to specify Yes to that option to get the desired behaviour.

For ILE COBOL one of the design points was "do it right and to hell with them".


Jon Paris

www.partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com

On Apr 26, 2019, at 5:06 PM, Jim Oberholtzer <midrangel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Jon,

That made my day! That's funny.

Jim Oberholtzer
Agile Technology Architects

On Apr 25, 2019, at 2:32 PM, Jon Paris <jon.paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I often tell folks that when I started working on compilers the big difference that I found between building applications and compilers is that if you make a mistake in an application the users are normally happy when you fix it. When you make a mistake with a compiler, by the time you realize it at least 50 developers have decided it is a "feature".

I once had to remove a bug fix from a compiler on orders from Lou Gerstner's office because a certain very large customer had developed an entire system that depended on the bug - and they were buying multiple machines to run the app!


Jon Paris

www.partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com

On Apr 25, 2019, at 11:37 AM, John Yeung <gallium.arsenide@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, Apr 25, 2019 at 11:10 AM John Rusling via MIDRANGE-L
<midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Yeah, i'll defer to you on what people might expect. :-)

Barbara was speaking gently, as she usually does. It's not so much
what people *expect*... it's that there is near certainty that
real-world code out there depends on the existing behavior, and will
break if that behavior is changed.

John Y.
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