[Info-vax] Long uptime cut short by Hurricane Sandy

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2013-02-01 13:49, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> In article <kegbb4$ekh$1 at iltempo.update.uu.se>,
> 	Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> writes:
>> On 2013-01-31 23:05, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>> In article <keeoak$tk0$1 at iltempo.update.uu.se>,
>>> 	Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> writes:
>>>> On 2013-01-31 22:25, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>>>> On 2013-01-31 20:22, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>>>>> In article <keeb7i$e15$1 at dont-email.me>,
>>>>>>       Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes:
>>>>>>> On 2013-01-31 17:38:45 +0000,   VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG said:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> $ filename =
>>>>>>>> filenameprefix+"_"+F$fao("!19AS",F$cvtime(,"COMPARISON"))-"-"-"-"-"
>>>>>>>> "-":"-":"+".dmp"
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Yeah.  Or add the prefix and the underscore into the f$fao, as that
>>>>>>> avoids clobbering caracters in the prefix.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> And tell me how the above is not cryptic?  Just what is the difference
>>>>>> between the first dash and the second?  Or the third?  And would anyone
>>>>>> normal determine that?  :-)
>>>>>
>>>>> Maybe it would be more obvious with some appropriately placed spaces...
>>>>>
>>>>> $ filename = filenameprefix + "_" +
>>>>> F$fao("!19AS",F$cvtime(,"COMPARISON")) - "-" - "-" - "-" - ":" - ":" +
>>>>> ".dmp"
>>>>>
>>>>> Ie, remove three dashes and two colons, and then add something at the
>>>>> end. (Ignoring what's going on at the beginning.)
>>>>
>>>> And my mistake, it should have read:
>>>>
>>>> $ filename = filenameprefix + "_" +
>>>> F$fao("!19AS",F$cvtime(,"COMPARISON")) - "-" - "-" - " " - ":" - ":" +
>>>> ".dmp"
>>>>
>>>> That was, two dashes, a space, two colons, and then add some...
>>>>
>>>
>>> I rest my case.  :-)
>>
>> Why? Because I put a dash in where there should have been a space? The
>> reason for that is that the space had disappeared because of wrapping in
>> news. So I had a "" in there, and through "hmm, that can't be right, I
>> must have deleted a dash by accident".
>
> My point was if someone familiar with this notation can make a mistake
> so easily, how can you expect a normal person to understand it?

And my point was that the mistake had nothing to do with the 
understanding of the operation, but what specific details of what the 
programmer wanted to do. I can't read minds...
I had no trouble understanding that he was subtracting strings. But I 
could see that a long line of "-"-"-"-"-" could make it look worse, so I 
figured just putting spaces around the operations would make it clearer 
what was actually strings with just a dash in them, and what was 
operations (subtractions).

>> If you find the above hard in general, then I suspect you are not very
>> comfortable with many programming languages either, which have similar
>> type of operations all over the place.
>
> I am profficient in more languages than people have fingers.  I have
> been a professional programmer for more than 30 years.  While I have
> seen plus signs used with alpha data for concatenation this is the
> first time I have ever seen a minus sign used for the removal of alpha
> data from a string.  What real programming languages use such notation?

SNOBOL to start with.
I need to check, but I think both perl and python might as well. Trying 
to remember what other languages I've used which have strings as a 
rather basic data type...

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol