[Info-vax] A DCL wish list of sorts...

[Dave Froble]

On 3/22/2019 9:53 AM, pcanagnostopoulos at gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, March 22, 2019 at 9:26:23 AM UTC-4, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> I would call it undefined behaviour and undefined behaviour is subject
>> to change as compilers and languages evolve.
>
> This is why language designers now specify whether "it is undefined" or "it is an error" or "an exception is raised" when doing various things in the programming language. The Common Lisp reference manual is particularly good in this respect.
>
>> Are you able to share the tale ?
>>
>> I don't know how similar the V2.x compiler was to the V4.x compiler
>> but certainly in current versions there were other little issues I
>> found in addition to the vulnerability itself.
>
> Oh, did you work on the compiler? I wonder if the current one is mine. Perhaps I'm misremembering the version. Does the syntax include a lexical element called an "h-string"?
>
> So the previous version allowed unquoted strings in various contexts. That compiler was written, quickly, by a particular VMS developer; let's call them Hughes. So when I wrote up the syntax specification for the new compiler and had to support such a string, I called it a "Hughes-string". Benn Schreiber reviewed the specification and gave me a well-deserved smackdown for using that term. It was unprofessional. So I changed it to h-string.
>
> ~~ Paul
>

Oh, we're suppose to be "professional" ?  Wasn't aware of that.

Sounds a bit like the story of the SR-71 approach to Sacramento airport.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTJYNq4GQAE

:-)

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
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