It is worth recalling, misused only a little, Chomsky's dictum: There is no reason to suppose that translation is in general possible.
His point is analogous to the statement that equations of degree greater than four cannot in general be solved. Particular quintics can sometimes, of course, be solved; and particular felicitous translations are sometimes possible. Regrettably, however, we are not here dealing with a version of Sappho by Catullus. No cobbled-together solution to the EBCDIC-to-ASCII and MVS-to-UNIX problem is likely to be entirely satisfactory in any circumstances, and even if one were found for one such set of circumstances it would cease to be so when these circumstances changed. CR anciently meant carriage return; LF anciently meant line feed; and LF was sometimes used, usefully, before EOL. Confounding them, as Shmuel has already pointed out somewhat gnomically, is all but certain to give trouble in some circumstances, however convenient it may be in others. Some problems just do not have neat solutions. --jg ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
