[email protected] (Clark Morris) writes:
> Actually there is a more subtle and hard to deal with reason. Any
> alphanumeric field comparison or sort on alphanumeric fields assumed
> upper case only. If case insensitivity were to be required, all of
> them would have to be rewritten. If not, other problems could arise.
> This gets worse for non-English languages if possible. Name and
> address matching algorithms must be interesting even in monocase.
there is discussion of some of this with respect to upper/lower case
representation and originally ibm 360 was going to be ascii ... but
Learson made one of the biggest "mistakes" of 360 ("The Biggest Computer
Goof Ever"):
http://www.bobbemer.com/P-BIT.HTM
from above:
I mention this because it is a classic software mistake. IBM was going
to announce the 360 in 1964 April as an ASCII machine, but their
printers and punches were not ready to handle ASCII, and IBM just HAD to
announce. So T.V. Learson (my boss's boss) decided to do both, as IBM
had a store of spendable money. They put in the P-bit. Set one way, it
ran in EBCDIC. Set the other way, it ran in ASCII.
But nobody told the programmers, like a Chinese Army in numbers! They
spent this huge amount of money to make software in which EBCDIC
encodings were used in the logic. Reverse the P-bit, to work in ASCII,
and it died. And they just could not spend that much money again to redo
it.
.... snip ... and (one of the Consequences):
Although some IBM customers would stay with all upper case for a while,
the introduction of lower case would destroy all collating precedent,
and IBM knew that, too. Especially from the STRETCH design in 1958,
where I made a big mistake in setting the collating sequence as
"A-a-B-b-C ..." [2]. Ordering alphabetically in dual case must be a
two-step process -- first on the letter itself, and then on the quality
of the letter (its case).
... snip ...
more ASCII
http://www.bobbemer.com/ASCII.HTM
for other trivia ... recent posts mentioning Learson corporate directive
memorandum (on bureaucracy)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#11
and, I suggested declaring Jan18 "T. Vincent Learson fight bureaucracy &
don't kill the individual" day ... also "Watson don't tame the wild
duck" day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#11
other posts in this thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#43 Article for the boss: COBOL will
outlive us all
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#45 Article for the boss: COBOL will
outlive us all
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#51 Article for the boss: COBOL will
outlive us all
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#52 Article for the boss: COBOL will
outlive us all
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#55 Dualcase vs monocase. Was: Article
for the boss
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#56 Dualcase vs monocase. Was: Article
for the boss
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#57 Dualcase vs monocase. Was: Article
for the boss
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#58 Dualcase vs monocase. Was: Article
for the boss
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#59 Dualcase vs monocase. Was: Article
for the boss
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
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