[email protected] (Paul Gilmartin) writes: > With a brief exposure to MVS, I started to learn CMS. I was shocked > (briefly) to learn that file names might begin with numeric digits; in > fact be entirely numeric. Why not in OS/360 data set names? In an > era of severe storage and CPU cycle constraints, the lexical analyzer > would have been simpler for not needing to treat the first character > specially. Would allowing numeric data set names have introduced a > syntactic ambiguity in JCL or elsewhere? Member names couldn't > unambiguously be numeric because of GDG levels.
I periodically pontificated that the batch heritage systems were for the convenience of the systems ... while people might prepare the program ... batch characteristic was that the responsible person(s) usually wasn't around ... and it was important that many things be able to run w/o the responsible person present. this is a different paradigm from the online systems ... for instance linux traces to unix to multics to ctss ... while vm370/cms trace to cp67/cms to the same ctss ... and is much more oriented to the convenience of people ... not to the system ... with a person much more likely to be directly involved with running an application. the batch system heritage would focus much more on computer resource optimization than people resource optimization ... this was common refrain from the 60s up through much of the 80s by POK favorite son operating system people. also ms/dos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS before ms/dos there was seattle computer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Computer_Products and before seattle computer there was cp/m http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M and before cp/m, kildall worked on cp67/cms at npg school (gone 404 but lives on at wayback machine) http://web.archive.org/web/20071011100440/http://www.khet.net/gmc/docs/museum/en_cpmName.html npg reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Postgraduate_School cp/67 reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/CMS -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
