McKown, John wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Howard Brazee
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 9:03 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Mainframe programming vs the Web
On 11 May 2008 14:26:06 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (David
Alcock) wrote:
Ever since the Web came along I've been annoyed by those web
sites that won't accept spaces or dashes like for credit cards
and phone numbers. I know that even ancient mainframe COBOL has
support for removing them with one command. I see that it's
just pure laziness as I suspected all along:
http://www.unixwiz.net/ndos-shame.html
I've seen "too much editing" being done in CoBOL as well. Editing
for stuff that doesn't matter - and which needs to be changed when
conditions change.
I hate the programming to make it hard to enter your credit cards, but
I also dislike it when they don't let me put in a 80301-2472 zip code.
There are foreign postal codes that *require* longer fields. And the
U.S. postal service wants these as well.
And let me type in phone numbers with dashes and parenthesis if I
want.
True! Validation of "postal codes" is a nightmare. Unlike credit card
numbers and telephone numbers, each individual government makes up its
own rules. The only way to validate is to first get the ISO
(international) country code, then possibly have a validation for each
country.
The other thing that irritates many is the US (and English?) centric
"First Name", "Middle Name (or initial)", "Last Name". I know that
Hispanics often have a LOT of "middle" names, and they are important to
them. But how to allow that is a difficulty that I would prefer to
avoid. Along with the usual "How many characters should I allow for a
name?".
There's lots of international / intercultural habits we in
the West are oblivious to, or choose to ignore. I like the
one where Ethiopians often have the father's first name
become the son's last name! Many Asian countries give
family name first. In some Asian and Middle Eastern cultures
a person may have more than one name, and which name he or
she tells you to use depends on how much they trust you.
I once met an instructor in San Francisco whose name was
something_or_other III. He decided the III was the only
part that gave him uniqueness. He had his name legally
changed to '3'. Failed a lot of validation tests on many
computer systems (drivers license, tax forms, credit
cards, and on and on); fought many, won some. I've lost
touch with him over the years, but I'll never forget his
story (he was an excellent instructor, too).
Kind regards,
-Steve Comstock
The Trainer's Friend, Inc.
303-393-8716
http://www.trainersfriend.com
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