Re: Charlie and COMMON

[Vern Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Splat has been in use a long time, so far as I can tell. A sentence in the "asterisk" wiki page says, "In Commodore (and related) filesystems, an asterisk appearing next to a filename in a directory listing denotes an improperly closed file, commonly called a "splat file"." This goes back to 1977, at least. I believe I heard that the name comes from the sound (and how it looks) when a bug smashes into the inside of the monitor screen. Exclamation points are "bang", so shell scripts in bash start with hash-band - #! - TMI coming - check this out for fun! https://ss64.com/bash/syntax-pronounce.html

Cheers
Vern

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Oberholtzer" <midrangel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Midrange Systems Technical Discussion" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2022 8:54:26 AM
Subject: Re: Charlie and COMMON

I've used that "splat" for so many years I cannot remember.  Until now I
was completely unaware of its origin.  Nice to know.

Charlie had just left the COMMON board when I first joined it.  It was a
pleasure watching him lend his managerial and people skills when
contentious items of discussion came up, and at that time there were
several.  Charlie's technical prowess aside, he was a great man.

--
Jim Oberholtzer
Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects


On Mon, May 16, 2022 at 8:04 AM Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis <
midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I too learned 'SPLAT' from Charlie. At one point in 1988 we hired a
> developer from India who had no middle name. We used everyone's initials
> for changes in programs and required 3 initials to keep things neat and
> in line. So hers became G*P which as you can imagine was pronounced 'Gee
> Splat Pee'  :-)  She is known by that even today over 30 years later.