Re: J4 - presentation/discussion on "Future of the COBOL Standard"

"Richard" <riplin@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:8ea4f6d9-93f3-47a4-8416-90479e7771ba@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Mar 15, 2:52 pm, Robert <n...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> On Fri, 14 Mar 2008 22:22:45 +1300, "Pete Dashwood" 
>> <dashw...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >I know the answer to this one, because it is one of the questions I 
>> >asked on
>> >my first COBOL course in 1967...
>>
>> Another neophyte.
>>
>> >It has nothing to do with variable strings being too complicated for
>> >compiler writers to deal with.  Later I spent some time with people
who 
>> >had
>> >actually written a very popular COBOL compiler, and I even got to
patch 
>> >the
>> >compiler myself so it would do what was needed for the site where I
was
>> >employed. All of this experience confirmed that the 31 byte limit on a

>> >COBOL
>> >name was nothing to do with variable strings being too complicated.
I'm 
>> >not
>> >going to tell you what the real reason was, but I can give you this 
>> >clue:
>>
>> >At the time COBOL was developed the 8 bit byte had not yet become the
>> >industry standard. Different architectures used 64, 32, or 24 bit
words,
>> >based on a 6 bit character. COBOL ran on these machines just as it did

>> >on 8
>> >bit byte architectures.
>>
>> So we're stuck with a 31 byte limit because we might wake one day to
find 
>> the last 40
>> years has been a bad dream, we're back to the ICL (whatever) with a 24 
>> bit word.
>>
>> Increasing the limit would have zero impact on legacy code.
>>
>
> No, you are wrong, again. The 31 character limit is that the _first_
> 31 characters of user defined words are used. Anything after 31 is
> ignored. So if some legacy code has used this by having longer names,
> but has been uncaring that the additional characters are consistent,
> then it will impact that code.
>

Oh, very well spotted, Richard.

I think you're absolutely right, but I'd be surprised to find any actual 
code around that would be impacted.

<snip>

Pete.
-- 
"I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."