[Info-vax] Text processing examples with Fortran requested

[Richard B. Gilbert]

VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
> In article <hdsrvc$9ag$1 at pcls6.std.com>, moroney at world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) writes:
>> VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG writes:
>>
>>> Well, see my last post.  If you want, replace .PRINT with .ERROR.  That
>>> will give you a "pause" so you can to examine the code. :)
>>> If I can intercept Itanium instruction streams and revector control,
>>> I don't see what could be all that outlandish in your Macro that's so
>>> difficult to port.
>> It's not the _difficulty_ of porting, it's the _sheer volume_ of changes
>> necessary.  We're talking hundreds of modules each with hundreds of
>> lines of stinking, rotten code, maybe a quarter million total.
>> It can get very mind-numbing.
> 
> Well, if you need help clearing the air from that stinking, rotten code,
> I'm always looking for something to do. ;)
> 
> 
>>>> (oh how I wish we could simply start over in another language. Pointy-
>>>> haired managers dictate otherwise)
>>> What?  Like C?  Try writing a parser to find all the zany things people
>>> do with that hieroglyphic and you'll be pining for that Macro you have 
>>> now.
>> If _we're_ writing the C (or whatever), our code will be _much_ cleaner
>> overall.  I may be crazy, but not _that_ crazy.
> 
> In your opinion.  I've seen C coded projects scarier than waking up naked,
> after a night of bar-hopping, in a bed with Nancy Pelosi by your side and
> as unprofessionally executed as an Ed Wood film coupled with documentation
> as informative as graffiti tags along a railroad siding.
> 

Ah, there's just nothing like code that has been hacked by eight or ten 
different people, each in a hurry to add the feature or fix the bug and 
get on with using it.

Frequently the only reasonable fix is to figure out what it does and 
then do a proper design for code to do that!