Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!wuarchive!psuvax1!psuvm!HDEDH1!NADWL From: NADWL@HDEDH1.BITNET (Scott Ophof) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Subject: Re: An arcane MVS question Message-ID: Date: 3 Feb 90 18:56:20 GMT Sender: IBM Mainframe Discussion list Reply-To: IBM Mainframe Discussion list Lines: 26 Approved: NETNEWS@PSUVM Gateway In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 1 Feb 90 22:25:00 CST from On Thu, 1 Feb 90 22:25:00 CST 815 John Naples 753-1875 said: >An arcane question about MVS replies: >... >In many places the operating system (MVS) or a utility is >unsure if it should proceed or not, and so it issues a request >to the console asking the operator whether or not it should >proceed. The obvious response to me would be "Y" or "YES" to >indicate it is okay to proceed, and "N" or "NO" to indicate the >contrary. But, in many cases the acceptable responses are >"U" (for yes) and "M" (for no). Does anyone know why this is >the case? The only (rather silly) answer I could propose is that >U/M are adjacent to Y/N on the keyboard. But I cannot accept that >answer. On some older terminals (I remember the TI 745 portable with acoustic modem), a numeric keypad was overlaid onto the alphabetic keyboard, as follows: 6 7 8 9 0 0 Y U 1 I 2 O 3 P H J 4 K 5 L 6 ; N M 7 , 8 . 9 / Could it be that this was for those people used to such an overlay? Regards. Scott/