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From: Alistair on 20 Feb 2010 15:50 On Feb 20, 5:37 pm, "James J. Gavan" <jgavandeletet...(a)shaw.ca> wrote: > Alistair wrote: > > > I've seen the six digit date (YYMMDD) subtracted from one million and > > used as a key. > > What sort of ansi-smansy technique is that ? Beats me but it was what we used. I can not remember whether it was a cobol or assembler based system. We also had a format of packed decimal where we removed the sign nibble. It made work for the worrking man to do but at that time file space was in short supply. > > Now the date one above is daft. Sez you, but it worked. > And being a COBOL system we are talking > fairly current dates, i.e., for the year 2010 we are in the range 2009 > to 2011 as an example. I don't think too many COBOL programmers are > interested in the date for Trafalgar or the Battle of Waterloo; October 21st 1805 and 18th June 1815 respectively. My two most favourite battles and I do read up on them often (I found out new stuff about Trafalgar only yesterday). > well not > to show bias - or the date for the Boston Tea Party. Who cares about a minor colonial spat? > > It's easily achievable in COBOL date functions to go from what I term > ISO-Format6 (yymmdd) to ISO-Format8 (CCyymmdd); same with the (North > American) NA-Format6 New fangled format which only Americans use. > or EU-Format6 and get back an ISO-Format8 giving > you a true ccyymmdd key. > > That date technique above. I've seen the same approach with some 4 M/F > users querying, 'why doesn't this work' when they dream up a routine for > getting the M/F usage of file-status-1 = "9"; they get some weird and > wonderful three-digit error numbers. One kid, (presumably), drove me > nuts, saying he was using a routine dreamed up where he worked and they > had used it for years. I can only assume they never got any file errors > that hit the '9' condition. In exasperation I wrote to him, "Don't > believe a word of what I'm saying. Take the M/F piece of code I've > pointed you at and try it. See how it compares with what you are trying > to use!". I'm fairly certain with reference to file-status codes, that > particular piece of code pops up in their on-line manuals. > > Jimmy, Calgary AB > > PS: Knew you would. Thanks for contacting the guy on N/E 5.1.- Hide quoted text - > I nearly didn't see the requirement. Probably best, if you want my attention, to email me direct.
From: James J. Gavan on 20 Feb 2010 18:03 Alistair wrote: > > October 21st 1805 and 18th June 1815 respectively. My two most > favourite battles and I do read up on them often (I found out new > stuff about Trafalgar only yesterday). What, like herself was on board and Nelson said "Kiss me Emma", rather than perhaps "Kismet, Hardy" ? > >>It's easily achievable in COBOL date functions to go from what I term >>ISO-Format6 (yymmdd) to ISO-Format8 (CCyymmdd); same with the (North >>American) NA-Format6 > > New fangled format which only Americans use. > Oh so wrong. I've already told you. In the Great White North we use all six possible formats. A little respect please for a former colony; this one, not the one below the 49th. >> >>PS: Knew you would. Thanks for contacting the guy on N/E 5.1.- Hide quoted text - > > I nearly didn't see the requirement. Probably best, if you want my > attention, to email me direct. Duly noted. BTW did you check that M/F Excel demo. Still got to pause in the code with a Breakpoint in the Animator but both the sheets showing ENLARGED single letters of the alphabet and the Chart are in the taskbar at the foot of your screen. Silly me. Jimmy
From: Alistair on 21 Feb 2010 07:32 On Feb 20, 11:03 pm, "James J. Gavan" <jgavandeletet...(a)shaw.ca> wrote: > Alistair wrote: > > > October 21st 1805 and 18th June 1815 respectively. My two most > > favourite battles and I do read up on them often (I found out new > > stuff about Trafalgar only yesterday). > > What, like herself was on board and Nelson said "Kiss me Emma", rather > than perhaps "Kismet, Hardy" ? > > >>It's easily achievable in COBOL date functions to go from what I term > >>ISO-Format6 (yymmdd) to ISO-Format8 (CCyymmdd); same with the (North > >>American) NA-Format6 > > > New fangled format which only Americans use. > > Oh so wrong. I've already told you. In the Great White North we use all > six possible formats. A little respect please for a former colony; this > one, not the one below the 49th. > Yes, I should show more respect for our allies from the war of 1812. BTW, do you mention the great American defeat to anyone from south of the border? I hear that they proudly proclaim that they have never lost a war. > > > >>PS: Knew you would. Thanks for contacting the guy on N/E 5.1.- Hide quoted text - > > > I nearly didn't see the requirement. Probably best, if you want my > > attention, to email me direct. > > Duly noted. BTW did you check that M/F Excel demo. Still got to pause in > the code with a Breakpoint in the Animator but both the sheets showing > ENLARGED single letters of the alphabet and the Chart are in the taskbar > at the foot of your screen. Silly me. I only converted the PECD code and did not check the result of the MF demo program. I was too pleased at getting my first ever OO Cobol program to work to think of anything else.
From: James J. Gavan on 21 Feb 2010 16:58 Alistair wrote: > On Feb 20, 11:03 pm, "James J. Gavan" <jgavandeletet...(a)shaw.ca> > wrote: >>Oh so wrong. I've already told you. In the Great White North we use all >>six possible formats. A little respect please for a former colony; this >>one, not the one below the 49th. >> > > > Yes, I should show more respect for our allies from the war of 1812. > BTW, do you mention the great American defeat to anyone from south of > the border? I hear that they proudly proclaim that they have never > lost a war. I've never had much interest in Canadian history as it is primarily parliamentarian. Just like I switched off English history around the Hanoverian Georges. Granted there have been some interesting MPs, but time and again I'm intrigued by the players of the Tudor period. The 1812 War. That's one snippet I remember. The Canucks burned down their first White House. (On reflection, I wish Dubya had been inside). > > BTW did you check that M/F Excel demo. Still got to pause in >>the code with a Breakpoint in the Animator but both the sheets showing >>ENLARGED single letters of the alphabet and the Chart are in the taskbar >>at the foot of your screen. Silly me. > > I only converted the PECD code and did not check the result of the MF > demo program. I was too pleased at getting my first ever OO Cobol > program to work to think of anything else. > Unfortunately I have a problem with that. OO is a concept regardless of language and over time has an accepted set of rules, classes, objects, inheritance etc. Bearing in mind that Simula (from Norway ?) was concerned with 'simulating' hence their initial OO approach. Then you move on to Xerox PARC, (Xerox (P)alo (A)lto (R)esearch (C)enter). I think they were at that time brilliant young people who dreamed up what became Smalltalk, which of course was a complimentary extension of the Simula ideas. Fine and dandy to dream something up, but how do you demonstrate it to your bosses - the Photo-copier salesmen running Xerox. Next step, drawings and figures, (the first amateurish GUIs), which were not OO but accessed through OO features. We don't even stop to think as we type into a word processor package; it's automatic, "It's always been around hasn't it ?". The first challenge they took was to produce a word processor. It would require much patience, but given the rich set of M/F support classes in Net Express, it would be possible to produce a word processor in Net Express. But why re-invent the wheel there is more than one superb word processor package around. Just as a sample of what PARC had to consider, and reading this you will visualize others. You type a whole paragraph. Now you want to insert some text as an extension to an existing sentence, or perhaps change or delete words. Later on you might what to highlight that paragraph and perhaps move it up or down. Pretty neat in current word processors, but imagine thinking of that with an empty white board before you start. One of their juniors, but highly prized, was a feisty young girl Adele Goldberg. She damn-well wanted to prove it worked. They produced stick figures and she and a buddy quietly nipped out the front door, unauthorized, with a couple of the machines they were working on and took them to a local school for the kids to play with the stick figures. It was a hit. The dumb photo-copier salesmen didn't get it. But Steve Jobs did and after two visits to PARC introduced the Lisa machine. Looking over Steve's shoulder was Bill Gates who gave us Winders. Why isn't Smalltalk a current success story - non-existent marketing. It's confusing, there seem to be so many versions of Smalltalk currently and the commercially sold ones have added GUI classes,and other support classes. I don't know if there is something called ANSI-Smalltalk; I doubt it. I haven't got a mental note of PECD's example, so I can't really comment. But if you look at that M/F example it is most definitely a PROCEDURAL program, a series of steps invoking OO-features (or GUI-features if you prefer). That hardly makes it an OO example. That's not knocking M/F, it goes step-by-step, procedurally to give you a feel as to what is going on. Although my hobby DateAndTime is an OO class with methods, I have a procedural program up front, just like M/F used, for testing and displaying results to a developer. This front-end program is nothing to do with the OO concept; you would never use it. If I suggested the M/F enhanced SCREEN SECTION as a way of doing things, you would naturally query "Why ?". People reading about OO get duped into thinking GUIs are part of it. Excel is a tool, with templates added with their OWN way of recognizing features for which they supply parameters. You get at it using OO - ONCE you know all the ins and outs of the bloody package ! Our friend Judson, now into BASIC was an evangelical in more than one way. He BELIEVED in M/F's SCREEN SECTION. He proudly proclaimed about the numerous lines of code he used to knock out, like a salty newspaper man at his typewriter. I always used to think, just how many times does he do copy and paste or re-invent the wheel by different coding. He was a success story though - I recall a photo of him stood against a snazzy red sports car. I wouldn't have bothered to even try, (if you can't drag him away for one minute from the Bible, not likely he would do a mind change about OO). Here's the point - I could have provided him with COBOL file handling as OO Classes, and surprise, surprise I could 'wrap' his SCREEN-SECTION code in OO. Again, nothing to do with GUIs. Almost missed it, but don't want to be negative. I'm glad you got some satisfaction out of what you did; should help to whet your appetite. Carry on the good work. Jimmy
From: Anonymous on 21 Feb 2010 17:22
In article <a5679210-0b4d-40a1-91c5-6c1f580cb446(a)j27g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>, Alistair <alistair(a)ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote: >On Feb 20, 12:08?am, docdw...(a)panix.com () wrote: [snip] >> Imagine - I know it may be difficult! - a company which added secondary >> keys in descending timestamp sequence for date/time of last order. >> >> (ain't nobody never seen nothing like that no time, right?) > >I've seen the six digit date (YYMMDD) subtracted from one million and >used as a key. One might wonder how such experience could be made to fit into the set of negatives which precedes it. DD |