Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!ames!haven!umbc3!mbph!hybl
From: hybl@mbph.UUCP (Albert Hybl  Dept of Biophysics  SM)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Character aliases are Satanic exten
Summary: The X3J3 committee is ...
Message-ID: <595@mbph.UUCP>
Date: 18 May 89 16:33:52 GMT
References: <592@mbph.UUCP> <50500128@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <105003@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Organization: University of Maryland, School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21201
Lines: 55

In article <105003@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> from khb%chiba@Sun.COM
(Keith Bierman - SPD Languages Marketing -- MTS), Keith
explains that Satanic character aliases were

>specifically DISALLOWED (made illegal) ...
>So a properly complying X3.9-1978 compiler SHOULD not accept this code

and that
>the last committee was braver (or more naive, or foolish, or ?? :>)

Let's say that the X3J3 committee exhibited sensibleness, acumen,
incisiveness, sagacity, short sightedness, adroitness, sageness,
prudence and some Byzantine shrewdness.

Speaking of which, Marketing Specialist Bierman goes on to say:
>... needless to say nearly all known compilers have been extended due
>to market pressures ... :>

Surely the X3.9-1978 standard reflected the consensus of the market!
Translated for the consumer, the marketing statement reads:  "We
didn't want to bother taking the old code out of our compilers,
besides if we provided consumers with a suitable filter, they might
migrate to another vendor.  The last thing we wish to do is
promote portability!"


In an electronic mail message from Greg Lindahl
<umbc3!uunet!bessel.acc.virginia.edu!gl8f>, Greg stated that Satanic
character aliases are "used by at least one big program that I know
of: AIPS, the Astronomical Image Processing System.  It consists of
3/4 million lines of code, and because it adheres to such an old and
outdated standard it has no trouble running on quite a few different
supercomputer, minisuper, and minicomputer architectures."

I have seen an impressive demonstration of what I think was the AIPS
software during a visit to the Space Telescope Science Institute in
Baltimore.  Just because astronomers measure events in light_years,
is not a good reason to allow AIPS to become obsolete.  How many
other programs contain these aliases?

Because a program adheres to an outdated standard is neither a
necessary nor sufficient reason to believe that it can be ported to
a particular computer.   Perhaps, AIPS would be a suitable test bed
for the development of a filter program that converts the Satanic
character aliases over to proper character type.  Another useful
filter would be one that replaces arithmetic if statements with
more structured control statements.

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Albert Hybl, PhD.              Office UUCP: uunet!mimsy!mbph!hybl
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