On 1999-09-09 [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
Bernie wrote:
>I noticed that no problems have been reported due to the date
>990909 (which was claimed to create problems - the explanation why
>it should is still highly unlogical) in the majority of the world
>(I haven't seen that nothing has happened in N/S-America yet, and
>no reports what so ever from the rest of the world).
<snip>
There is nothing illogical in the explanation as to why the date,
Sept 9th, 1999 was likely to have resulted in problems in many
industries that rely on computers.
Back in the good old days of DOS version 1.0 and CPM, many programs
were written in which forms were processed under an infinite loop
routine which provided for a keyboard input of "9999" as the
"stop program" command, being the only valid input for exiting the
loop and ending the program. A computer operator running such a
program would encounter a prompt stating "Enter the date". To stop
the program and exit, the operator would simply enter "9999". A
program properly written to work in this fashion would always
execute just fine and never produce any problems except in the
special case in which the operator intended to enter "9999" as a
valid date, rather than as a "stop program" command. During the
era in which the programs were written, everybody "assumed" (and you
know what this means) that the programs would have been superseded
and replaced by new programs prior to September 9th, 1999.
Does anything more need to be said about the error of those that
"assume"?
Sam Heywood
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