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From: greenber@phri.UUCP (Ross Greenberg)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc,net.micro.ti
Subject: Re: Help with SWITCHAR
Message-ID: <2262@phri.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 2-Mar-86 15:38:23 EST
Article-I.D.: phri.2262
Posted: Sun Mar  2 15:38:23 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Mar-86 03:58:46 EST
References: <2000@psuvax1.UUCP> <2248@phri.UUCP> <840@eagle.ukc.ac.uk>
Reply-To: greenber@phri.UUCP (Ross Greenberg)
Distribution: net
Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY)
Lines: 32
Xref: linus net.micro.pc:7010 net.micro.ti:149

In article <840@eagle.ukc.ac.uk> rde@eagle.UUCP (R.D.Eager) writes:
>>[Quoting me attacking various software products and their incompatibilities
>>with variou settings of SWITCHAR]

>Hardly fair. This is an undocumented feature
> (however much we believe it should
>be there) which means the guy who wrote the program either:
>  - didn't know about it
>  - made a conscious decision not to use it in the interests of forwards
>    compatibility.

That would be the case, except that the program in question seems to
be a compiler. I would expect compiler designers to keep current on
even undocumented features -- part of the joys of working for a large
software house, I feel.

The code in question (fetch the switchar and replace it in the call
to LOAD AND EXECUTE) is only a few bytes long.  We've been talking about
the switch character on the net for about a year now, and *our* code
allows for it.  Documented or not, the compiler author(s) must have
received a number of calls about it, and therefore should have been
able to determine what the problem is/was and fixed it.

Just my opinion, of course!


-- 
------
ross m. greenberg
ihnp4!allegra!phri!sysdes!greenber

[phri rarely makes a guest-account user a spokesperson. Especially not me.]