Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!sco!seanf
From: seanf@sco.COM (Sean Fagan)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: COmputer follies
Keywords: FORTRAN
Message-ID: <1228@scolex>
Date: 12 Sep 88 05:31:06 GMT
Reply-To: seanf@sco.COM (Sean Fagan)
Organization: The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.
Lines: 21

I don't know if this one exactly fits in here, but it's funny anyway (I
think it is).  One student at Cal State Northridge, after taking a class in
Pascal (and finding out about local variables, parameters, and their place
on the stack) then took a class in FORTRAN.  One of the programs he ended up
writing had a routine that squared up it's parameter (I don't know why they
just didn't use inline code); he figured that, since the parameter was on
the stack, and local variables would also be on the stack, he would save
time by doing something like: 'INTEGER SQUARE(x); x=x*x; RETURN x'
(formatted properly, of course).  Then, in his program, he printed out
something like 'SQUARE(5)'.  Unfortunately, he was on a CDC Cyber, which
doesn't have a stack, and very seriously believes that if you modify a
parameter to a function, that's what you want to do.  He ended up asking the
student assistant on duty (me) why his program was printing:
	'PRINT *,5,SQUARE(5)'
as '25   25' (or something like that)...

Well, I thought it was funny.
-- 
Sean Eric Fagan  | "Joy is in the ears that hear, not in the mouth that speaks"
seanf@sco.UUCP   |     -- Saltheart Foamfollower (S. R. Donaldson)
(408) 458-1422   | Any opinions expressed are my own, not my employers'.