In a recent note, R.S. said: > Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2006 12:42:19 +0200 > > > Perhaps you feel that all utilities, on all platforms, should > > process only columns 1-72 of their input data. Ain't gonna > > happen. > > Even some mainframe programs interpret it as data, with funny effects > somtimes. For example SYSIN DD * for FTP program cannot contain the > numbers. AFAIK some TCPIP config files as well. > ITYM "INPUT DD *". (Feels like Pascal, doesn't it?)
Perhaps the access methods should strip off the sequence numbers so utilities and user programs need never be concerned with them. > AFAIK the sequence numbers are completely useless nowadays. It was used > for punched card sorter. Is there any other application ? > No longer. The 700/7000 series had a card reader (407 variant?) that read cards in row binary, two 36-bit words per row (software converted to BCD) , so there were always 8 columns you couldn't read. You could select which 8 with a plugboard. This likely contributed to the convention of 8-character sequence numbers. The PDP-6/10/20 stored 5 ASCII characters per 36-bit word (sometimes), so 5-character sequence numbers were conventional. It used bit 35 as a flag to indicate that the word contained a sequence number that the programmer might chose to ignore. -- gil -- StorageTek INFORMATION made POWERFUL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
