In 1974, Gustav Larsson, a young programmer from Helsinki,
Finland, stumbled upon an amazing discovery. While working
with a PDP-8 mainframe computer, Gustav suddenly because
bored. He decided to attempt to compile a single byte
program. For what reasons we cannot know.

Nevertheless, Gustav was already familiar with RTPS FORTRAN
and thus picked a single character to represent the
contents of the program: "@". Once compiled, he expected
nothing to happen.

He was wrong. To his absolute amazement, it compiled
successfully!

Using an ARS-33 Teletype, Gustav printed out the 1 byte program
followed by its output. It appeared to contain a message from
God. A devout Catholic, Gustav showed it to his immediate
supervisor, who ordered both the print out and the program
itself destroyed. Although Gustav complied with his wishes,
it is rumored that he kept a copy of the printout in a small
shoe box in his apartment in Helsinki.

He also kept a brown diary which included various small
passages from the "Helsinki Code" (as he described it years
later). According to Gustav, the Helsinki Code came directly
from the 'Mind of God.'

The Helsinki Code read (in part):

"...[M]y presence in your world is unalterable for I am the
sanctuary of both the cosmos and the one soul inside you. I
could awaken each of you in this very moment to [my] unity,
but there is a larger design - a more comprehensive vision -
that places you in the boundaries of time and the spatial
dimensions of separateness...[T]he design requires a
progression into my wholeness that reacquaints you with
[my] unity through the experience of separation. Your
awakening, while slow and sometimes painful, is assured,
and this you must trust above all else..."

(Page 26 of Gustav's Journal - Dated February 10th, 1975)

Gustav passed away in 1996. Although his diary has since
turned up missing, the above fragment from the 'Helsinki
Code' remains. Perhaps, just perhaps, we can learn to
be better people simply by reading it.

Paul

dunric@yahoo.com wrote:
> In 1974, Gustav Larsson, a young programmer from Helsinki,
> Finland, stumbled upon an amazing discovery. While working
> with a PDP-8 mainframe computer, Gustav suddenly because
> bored. He decided to attempt to compile a single byte
> program. For what reasons we cannot know.
>
> Nevertheless, Gustav was already familiar with RTPS FORTRAN
> and thus picked a single character to represent the
> contents of the program: "@". Once compiled, he expected
> nothing to happen.
>
> He was wrong. To his absolute amazement, it compiled
> successfully!
>
> Using an ARS-33 Teletype, Gustav printed out the 1 byte program
> followed by its output. It appeared to contain a message from
> God.

Almost certainly not from God. It most probably, very likely, almost
certainly, definitely came from the compiler writer. If Gustav decides
to call him god then be it. But the compiler writer is certainly human.

By the way, historically that is not the shortest piece of source code
ever written. Some time ago someone submitted a zero byte C source code
(an empty file) to the obfuscated C contest. Amazingly gcc recognised
it as a valid and legal C source code and compiled it into an
executable. The program, when run, outputs nothing. Thus it also claims
to be the shortest quine (self reproducing code) in history by printing
out itself (nothing). It actually won the competition. After that, the
obfuscated C contest banned all zero byte source code.

slebetman@yahoo.com wrote:
> dunric@yahoo.com wrote:
> 
>>In 1974, Gustav Larsson, a young programmer from Helsinki,
>>Finland, stumbled upon an amazing discovery. While working
>>with a PDP-8 mainframe computer, Gustav suddenly because
>>bored. He decided to attempt to compile a single byte
>>program. For what reasons we cannot know.
>>
>>Nevertheless, Gustav was already familiar with RTPS FORTRAN
>>and thus picked a single character to represent the
>>contents of the program: "@". Once compiled, he expected
>>nothing to happen.
>>
>>He was wrong. To his absolute amazement, it compiled
>>successfully!
>>
>>Using an ARS-33 Teletype, Gustav printed out the 1 byte program
>>followed by its output. It appeared to contain a message from
>>God.
> 
> 
> Almost certainly not from God. 

Right.  It sounds like the Devil to me.

dunric@yahoo.com wrote:

> In 1974, Gustav Larsson, a young programmer from Helsinki,
> Finland, stumbled upon an amazing discovery. While working
> with a PDP-8 mainframe computer, Gustav suddenly because
> bored. He decided to attempt to compile a single byte
> program. For what reasons we cannot know.

The PDP-8 is a twelve bit machine.   Do you mean a 1.5 byte
program?

The PDP-11 has a one instruction program which can be used
to test all of memory.

-- glen

slebetman@yahoo.com said:

> By the way, historically that is not the shortest piece of source code
> ever written. Some time ago someone submitted a zero byte C source code
> (an empty file) to the obfuscated C contest. Amazingly gcc recognised
> it as a valid and legal C source code and compiled it into an
> executable. The program, when run, outputs nothing. Thus it also claims
> to be the shortest quine (self reproducing code) in history by printing
> out itself (nothing). It actually won the competition. After that, the
> obfuscated C contest banned all zero byte source code.

The best entries are the ones that result in a rule change. :-)

Incidentally, null files are nothing particularly new - they've been used as 
flags many a time.

-- 
Richard Heathfield
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29/7/1999
http://www.cpax.org.uk
email: rjh at above domain (but drop the www, obviously)

slebetman@yahoo.com wrote:
> dunric@yahoo.com wrote:
> 
>>In 1974, Gustav Larsson, a young programmer from Helsinki,
>>Finland, stumbled upon an amazing discovery. While working
>>with a PDP-8 mainframe computer, Gustav suddenly because
>>bored. He decided to attempt to compile a single byte
>>program. For what reasons we cannot know.
>>
>>Nevertheless, Gustav was already familiar with RTPS FORTRAN
>>and thus picked a single character to represent the
>>contents of the program: "@". Once compiled, he expected
>>nothing to happen.
>>
>>He was wrong. To his absolute amazement, it compiled
>>successfully!
>>
>>Using an ARS-33 Teletype, Gustav printed out the 1 byte program
>>followed by its output. It appeared to contain a message from
>>God.
> 
> Almost certainly not from God. It most probably, very likely, almost
> certainly, definitely came from the compiler writer. If Gustav decides
> to call him god then be it. But the compiler writer is certainly human.
> 
> By the way, historically that is not the shortest piece of source code
> ever written. Some time ago someone submitted a zero byte C source code
> (an empty file) to the obfuscated C contest. Amazingly gcc recognised
> it as a valid and legal C source code and compiled it into an
> executable. The program, when run, outputs nothing. Thus it also claims
> to be the shortest quine (self reproducing code) in history by printing
> out itself (nothing). It actually won the competition. After that, the
> obfuscated C contest banned all zero byte source code.

All? How many can there be;)

Richard Heathfield wrote:

(snip)

> Incidentally, null files are nothing particularly new - they've been used as 
> flags many a time.

I remember having a comment after the END statement of a Fortran 
program, which results in various error messages, such as missing END 
statement, and maybe some about no executable statements.  It might also 
generate an extra MAIN, confusing things somewhat.

-- glen

On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 16:30:22 +1100, Russell Shaw
<rjshawN_o@s_pam.netspace.net.au> wrote in comp.programming:

> slebetman@yahoo.com wrote:
> > dunric@yahoo.com wrote:
> > 
> >>In 1974, Gustav Larsson, a young programmer from Helsinki,
> >>Finland, stumbled upon an amazing discovery. While working
> >>with a PDP-8 mainframe computer, Gustav suddenly because
> >>bored. He decided to attempt to compile a single byte
> >>program. For what reasons we cannot know.
> >>
> >>Nevertheless, Gustav was already familiar with RTPS FORTRAN
> >>and thus picked a single character to represent the
> >>contents of the program: "@". Once compiled, he expected
> >>nothing to happen.
> >>
> >>He was wrong. To his absolute amazement, it compiled
> >>successfully!
> >>
> >>Using an ARS-33 Teletype, Gustav printed out the 1 byte program
> >>followed by its output. It appeared to contain a message from
> >>God.
> > 
> > Almost certainly not from God. It most probably, very likely, almost
> > certainly, definitely came from the compiler writer. If Gustav decides
> > to call him god then be it. But the compiler writer is certainly human.
> > 
> > By the way, historically that is not the shortest piece of source code
> > ever written. Some time ago someone submitted a zero byte C source code
> > (an empty file) to the obfuscated C contest. Amazingly gcc recognised
> > it as a valid and legal C source code and compiled it into an
> > executable. The program, when run, outputs nothing. Thus it also claims
> > to be the shortest quine (self reproducing code) in history by printing
> > out itself (nothing). It actually won the competition. After that, the
> > obfuscated C contest banned all zero byte source code.
> 
> All? How many can there be;)

How about...

....zero byte ASCII programs

....zero byte EBCDIC programs

....zero byte Unicode programs

....zero byte K&R programs

....zero byte C89 programs

....zero byte C99 programs -- wouldn't work anyway, lack of fully C99
conforming compilers.

In alt.folklore.computers slebetman@yahoo.com <slebetman@gmail.com> wrot
> By the way, historically that is not the shortest piece of source code
> ever written. Some time ago someone submitted a zero byte C source code
> (an empty file) to the obfuscated C contest. Amazingly gcc recognised
> it as a valid and legal C source code and compiled it into an
> executable. The program, when run, outputs nothing. Thus it also claims
> to be the shortest quine (self reproducing code) in history by printing
> out itself (nothing). It actually won the competition. After that, the
> obfuscated C contest banned all zero byte source code.

Too bad you can't do that anymore just for giggles.  Do you remember the
hardware, OS, and compiler used?  It still works with Perl.

zaphod:/tmp$ touch foo.c
zaphod:/tmp$ gcc --version   
gcc (GCC) 3.3.3 (NetBSD nb3 20040520)
Copyright (C) 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

zaphod:/tmp$ gcc -o foo foo.c
/usr/lib/crt0.o(.text+0x86): In function `___start':
: undefined reference to `main'
zaphod:/tmp$

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi@cs.csbuak.edu  <-- Switch the 'b' and 'u'

>>He decided to attempt to compile a single byte
>>program. For what reasons we cannot know.

....becuase his smart-ass friend bet him he couldn't; not because he
wanted to challenge Gustav's programming skills, but because he
replaced the FORTRAN compiler, with a seemingly innocent, but very
special, FORTRAN compiler that he had wrote. Of course, he had just
added code to the current FORTRAN compiler so that it would compile
single byte's each which when compiled and run would produce special
output. Coincidently, Gustav first attempted to compile an "@", which
produced his output from "God." However, if he hadn't gotten so excited
about this, he would have realized that compiling certain other
single-byte characters would have produced additional prophetic output
as well. Some of these are described below:

Char - "Description"
@ - A message from "God" (exact message not repeated here)
$ - A message from "Satan" (exact message not repeated here)
! - "u r teh suck!!!1!!1"
& - "All your base are belong to us"
< - "nerf the PDP-8"
? - "42"

[yeah, sorry. I was bored.]

On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 05:29:42 +0000 (UTC)
Richard Heathfield <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> The best entries are the ones that result in a rule change. :-)
> 
> Incidentally, null files are nothing particularly new - they've been used as 
> flags many a time.

	Indeed /bin/true on UNIX systems is often an empty file or
sometimes a file full of comments.

-- 
C:>WIN                                      |   Directable Mirror Arrays
The computer obeys and wins.                | A better way to focus the sun
You lose and Bill collects.                 |    licences available see
                                            |    http://www.sohara.org/

Richard Heathfield writes:

> The best entries are the ones that result in a rule change. :-)

That happened in high school physics class.  We had a competition of
building bridges out of nothing more than balsa wood and Elmer's glue.
They were graded on two factors:  (a) design (by a local architecture
firm) and (b) how much weight they would hold in the school's annual
bridge crushing.  One person decided to coat each piece of balsa wood
in Elmer's glue, rather than simply using it to join pieces together.
His bridge held several times more weight than anybody else's,
resulting in the rule change.

dunric@yahoo.com wrote:
> In 1974, Gustav Larsson, a young programmer from Helsinki,
> Finland, stumbled upon an amazing discovery. While working
> with a PDP-8 mainframe computer, Gustav suddenly because
> bored. He decided to attempt to compile a single byte
> program. For what reasons we cannot know.
>
> Nevertheless, Gustav was already familiar with RTPS FORTRAN
> and thus picked a single character to represent the
> contents of the program: "@". Once compiled, he expected
> nothing to happen.
>
> He was wrong. To his absolute amazement, it compiled
> successfully!
>
> Using an ARS-33 Teletype, Gustav printed out the 1 byte program
> followed by its output. It appeared to contain a message from
> God. A devout Catholic, Gustav showed it to his immediate
> supervisor, who ordered both the print out and the program
> itself destroyed. Although Gustav complied with his wishes,
> it is rumored that he kept a copy of the printout in a small
> shoe box in his apartment in Helsinki.
>
> He also kept a brown diary which included various small
> passages from the "Helsinki Code" (as he described it years
> later). According to Gustav, the Helsinki Code came directly
> from the 'Mind of God.'
>
> The Helsinki Code read (in part):
>
> "...[M]y presence in your world is unalterable for I am the
> sanctuary of both the cosmos and the one soul inside you. I
> could awaken each of you in this very moment to [my] unity,
> but there is a larger design - a more comprehensive vision -
> that places you in the boundaries of time and the spatial
> dimensions of separateness...[T]he design requires a
> progression into my wholeness that reacquaints you with
> [my] unity through the experience of separation. Your
> awakening, while slow and sometimes painful, is assured,
> and this you must trust above all else..."
>
> (Page 26 of Gustav's Journal - Dated February 10th, 1975)
>
> Gustav passed away in 1996. Although his diary has since
> turned up missing, the above fragment from the 'Helsinki
> Code' remains. Perhaps, just perhaps, we can learn to
> be better people simply by reading it.
>
> Paul

Reminds me of a story I heard many years ago...

A certain university computing facility (I think this was in the days
when you submitted a deck of punched cards, and received your output
the following day) decided to write a compiler that would attempt to
guess what the students meant to write, and correct the code as it
thought fit.
So someone decided to submit the first chapter of Genesis - and it
compiled.

Dave Flower

In article <1134362645.916762.143340@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
slebetman@yahoo.com <slebetman@gmail.com> wrote:
>dunric@yahoo.com wrote:

>Almost certainly not from God. It most probably, very likely, almost
>certainly, definitely came from the compiler writer. If Gustav decides
>to call him god then be it. But the compiler writer is certainly human.

Then that programmer must have been a Bit God. Or very possibly
a Byte God. The program was, after all, a whole byte.

-- mrr

"glen herrmannsfeldt" <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message 
news:vtWdnUBSSJRflQDeRVn-rQ@comcast.com...
> dunric@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> The PDP-8 is a twelve bit machine.   Do you mean a 1.5 byte
> program?
>
Careful, a byte has no standardized length. The ISO term for an 8-bit byte 
is 'octet'.

Regards,

Mike Metcalf 

Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> writes:

>On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 05:29:42 +0000 (UTC)
>Richard Heathfield <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

>> The best entries are the ones that result in a rule change. :-)
>> 
>> Incidentally, null files are nothing particularly new - they've been used as 
>> flags many a time.

>Indeed /bin/true on UNIX systems is often an empty file or
>sometimes a file full of comments.

The ferpect program! :-)

But it cheats because it relies on a shell interpreter.

Previously, the shortest that I encountered was simply "I"; being
equivalent to SVCA-11 (supervisor call A number 11) on AMOS.  The
program simply exited.

That is a directly-executing, stand-alone program so it doesn't
cheat.
-- 
/"\ Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia
\ /  ASCII ribbon campaign | Economist	\E*con"o*mist\, n.
 X   against HTML mail     | One with a ready explanation as to why
/ \  and postings          | his last prediction was so wrong

In article <egev63-084.ln1@main.anatron.com.au>, 
    Russell Shaw <rjshawN_o@s_pam.netspace.net.au> writes:
>> 
>> By the way, historically that is not the shortest piece of source code
>> ever written. Some time ago someone submitted a zero byte C source code
>> (an empty file) to the obfuscated C contest. Amazingly gcc recognised
>> it as a valid and legal C source code and compiled it into an
>> executable. The program, when run, outputs nothing. Thus it also claims
>> to be the shortest quine (self reproducing code) in history by printing
>> out itself (nothing). It actually won the competition. After that, the
>> obfuscated C contest banned all zero byte source code.
> 
> All? How many can there be;)

   He should have patented it, then he could charge outrageous licensing
fees to anyone found to have a zero-length file on their system.

<dunric@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:1134358062.550739.108660@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> In 1974, Gustav Larsson, a young programmer from Helsinki,
> Finland, stumbled upon an amazing discovery. While working
> with a PDP-8 mainframe computer, Gustav suddenly because
> bored. He decided to attempt to compile a single byte
> program. For what reasons we cannot know.
>
It does stretch the truth more than just a little to call a PDP-8 a 
mainframe computer.  In point of fact, it was the very first minicomputer.
Jim

On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 22:06:51 +0800
Bernd Felsche <bernie@innovative.iinet.net.au> wrote:

> Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
> 
> >On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 05:29:42 +0000 (UTC)
> >Richard Heathfield <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> 
> >> The best entries are the ones that result in a rule change. :-)
> >> 
> >> Incidentally, null files are nothing particularly new - they've been used as 
> >> flags many a time.
> 
> >Indeed /bin/true on UNIX systems is often an empty file or
> >sometimes a file full of comments.
> 
> The ferpect program! :-)

	And yet the last time I looked at it on a Sun box it was
version 1.5 - I just hope the commit messages don't say "Bug fix".

> But it cheats because it relies on a shell interpreter.

	Well yes.

> Previously, the shortest that I encountered was simply "I"; being
> equivalent to SVCA-11 (supervisor call A number 11) on AMOS.  The
> program simply exited.
> 
> That is a directly-executing, stand-alone program so it doesn't
> cheat.

	On CP/M the one byte program RST 0 (0xC7) would do exactly that.

-- 
C:>WIN                                      |   Directable Mirror Arrays
The computer obeys and wins.                | A better way to focus the sun
You lose and Bill collects.                 |    licences available see
                                            |    http://www.sohara.org/

In article <1134362645.916762.143340@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, 
slebetman@gmail.com says...

> By the way, historically that is not the shortest piece of source code
> ever written. Some time ago someone submitted a zero byte C source code
> (an empty file) to the obfuscated C contest. Amazingly gcc recognised
> it as a valid and legal C source code and compiled it into an
> executable. The program, when run, outputs nothing. Thus it also claims
> to be the shortest quine (self reproducing code) in history by printing
> out itself (nothing). It actually won the competition. After that, the
> obfuscated C contest banned all zero byte source code.

Surely a zero-byte program is ineligible anyway, as it is not 
obfuscated in any way?

- Gerry Quinn

In article <MPG.1e07b46b131d0f9598a849@news1.eircom.net>,
	Gerry Quinn <gerryq@DELETETHISindigo.ie> writes:
> In article <1134362645.916762.143340@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, 
> slebetman@gmail.com says...
> 
>> By the way, historically that is not the shortest piece of source code
>> ever written. Some time ago someone submitted a zero byte C source code
>> (an empty file) to the obfuscated C contest. Amazingly gcc recognised
>> it as a valid and legal C source code and compiled it into an
>> executable. The program, when run, outputs nothing. Thus it also claims
>> to be the shortest quine (self reproducing code) in history by printing
>> out itself (nothing). It actually won the competition. After that, the
>> obfuscated C contest banned all zero byte source code.
> 
> Surely a zero-byte program is ineligible anyway, as it is not 
> obfuscated in any way?

I don't know about that.  The purpose of obfuscation is so you can't
easily tell by reading it what it does,  I would assume if handed to
most people they would say the program does nothing when in fact, it
duplicates itself.  Sounds obfuscated to me.  :-)

bill
(I'm just waiting for the obuscated COBOL contest.  It's much more fun.
 Most C ends out being obfuscated wether you want it to be or not.)

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
bill@cs.scranton.edu     |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>   

Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

> On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 05:29:42 +0000 (UTC)
> Richard Heathfield <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> 
> > Incidentally, null files are nothing particularly new - they've been used as
> > flags many a time.
> 
>       Indeed /bin/true on UNIX systems is often an empty file or
> sometimes a file full of comments.

Sometimes amusing comments. I've seen a version which was nothing but a
copyright message.

-- 
Richard Maine                     | Good judgment comes from experience;
email: my first.last at org.domain| experience comes from bad judgment.
org: nasa, domain: gov            |       -- Mark Twain

Jim wrote:

> <dunric@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
> news:1134358062.550739.108660@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> 
>>In 1974, Gustav Larsson, a young programmer from Helsinki,
>>Finland, stumbled upon an amazing discovery. While working
>>with a PDP-8 mainframe computer, Gustav suddenly because
>>bored. He decided to attempt to compile a single byte
>>program. For what reasons we cannot know.
>>
> 
> It does stretch the truth more than just a little to call a PDP-8 a 
> mainframe computer.  In point of fact, it was the very first minicomputer.
                                                     ^^^^^^^^^^

There were others in the PDP series before it.
> Jim
> 
> 


-- 
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam.  Our true address is of the form che...@prodigy.net.

Bill Gunshannon wrote:

> In article <MPG.1e07b46b131d0f9598a849@news1.eircom.net>,
> 	Gerry Quinn <gerryq@DELETETHISindigo.ie> writes:
> 
>>In article <1134362645.916762.143340@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, 
>>slebetman@gmail.com says...
>>
>>
>>>By the way, historically that is not the shortest piece of source code
>>>ever written. Some time ago someone submitted a zero byte C source code
>>>(an empty file) to the obfuscated C contest. Amazingly gcc recognised
>>>it as a valid and legal C source code and compiled it into an
>>>executable. The program, when run, outputs nothing. Thus it also claims
>>>to be the shortest quine (self reproducing code) in history by printing
>>>out itself (nothing). It actually won the competition. After that, the
>>>obfuscated C contest banned all zero byte source code.
>>
>>Surely a zero-byte program is ineligible anyway, as it is not 
>>obfuscated in any way?
> 
> 
> I don't know about that.  The purpose of obfuscation is so you can't
> easily tell by reading it what it does,  I would assume if handed to
> most people they would say the program does nothing when in fact, it
> duplicates itself.  Sounds obfuscated to me.  :-)
> 
> bill
> (I'm just waiting for the obuscated COBOL contest.  It's much more fun.
>  Most C ends out being obfuscated wether you want it to be or not.)
> 
Indeed. Where is the UN-obfuscated C contest?

-- 
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam.  Our true address is of the form che...@prodigy.net.

CJT <abujlehc@prodigy.net> wrote in news:439DB159.4000303@prodigy.net:

> Jim wrote:
> 
>> <dunric@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
>> news:1134358062.550739.108660@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>> 
>>>In 1974, Gustav Larsson, a young programmer from Helsinki,
>>>Finland, stumbled upon an amazing discovery. While working
>>>with a PDP-8 mainframe computer, Gustav suddenly because
>>>bored. He decided to attempt to compile a single byte
>>>program. For what reasons we cannot know.
>>>
>> 
>> It does stretch the truth more than just a little to call a PDP-8 a 
>> mainframe computer.  In point of fact, it was the very first
>> minicomputer. 
>                                                      ^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> There were others in the PDP series before it.

True, but the the term "minicomputer" was first applied to the PDP-8.  
According to Denzil Doyle, the first president of Digital Equipment of 
Canada (subsidiary of DEC), it was as Canadian vice president on 
secondment to the new UK subsidiary that proposed the name 
"minicomputer", taking the lead from the latest in women's fashion the 
"miniskirt" (which was not yet seen in North America).

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
  A L B E R T A         Alfred Falk               falk@arc.ab.ca 
R E S E A R C H         Information Systems Dept   (780)450-5185
  C O U N C I L         250 Karl Clark Road
                        Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
http://www.arc.ab.ca/   T6N 1E4
http://www.arc.ab.ca/staff/falk/

CJT wrote:
> Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> 
>> In article <MPG.1e07b46b131d0f9598a849@news1.eircom.net>,
>>     Gerry Quinn <gerryq@DELETETHISindigo.ie> writes:
>>
>>> In article <1134362645.916762.143340@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, 
>>> slebetman@gmail.com says...
>>>
>>>
>>>> By the way, historically that is not the shortest piece of source code
>>>> ever written. Some time ago someone submitted a zero byte C source code
>>>> (an empty file) to the obfuscated C contest. Amazingly gcc recognised
>>>> it as a valid and legal C source code and compiled it into an
>>>> executable. The program, when run, outputs nothing. Thus it also claims
>>>> to be the shortest quine (self reproducing code) in history by printing
>>>> out itself (nothing). It actually won the competition. After that, the
>>>> obfuscated C contest banned all zero byte source code.
>>>
>>>
>>> Surely a zero-byte program is ineligible anyway, as it is not 
>>> obfuscated in any way?
>>
>>
>>
>> I don't know about that.  The purpose of obfuscation is so you can't
>> easily tell by reading it what it does,  I would assume if handed to
>> most people they would say the program does nothing when in fact, it
>> duplicates itself.  Sounds obfuscated to me.  :-)
>>
>> bill
>> (I'm just waiting for the obuscated COBOL contest.  It's much more fun.
>>  Most C ends out being obfuscated wether you want it to be or not.)
>>
> Indeed. Where is the UN-obfuscated C contest?
> 

There is none; all C is obfuscated, it can't help it.

:)

On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 13:55:25 GMT, "Michael Metcalf"
<michaelmetcalf@compuserve.com> wrote:


>Careful, a byte has no standardized length. The ISO term for an 8-bit byte 
>is 'octet'.

Did a byte used to mean 8 bits, before ISO stepped in?

ISO does tend to make up new terms, even where the old one was widely
used and accepted.  E.g., "Hz" instead of "cps".

Ken Plotkin

"CJT" <abujlehc@prodigy.net> wrote in message 
news:439DB159.4000303@prodigy.net...
> Jim wrote:
>
>> <dunric@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
>> news:1134358062.550739.108660@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>>
>>>In 1974, Gustav Larsson, a young programmer from Helsinki,
>>>Finland, stumbled upon an amazing discovery. While working
>>>with a PDP-8 mainframe computer, Gustav suddenly because
>>>bored. He decided to attempt to compile a single byte
>>>program. For what reasons we cannot know.
>>>
>>
>> It does stretch the truth more than just a little to call a PDP-8 a 
>> mainframe computer.  In point of fact, it was the very first 
>> minicomputer.
>                                                     ^^^^^^^^^^
>
> There were others in the PDP series before it.
Yes, of course, but the first one that was advertised as a minicomputer was 
the PDP-8.  One would hardly call the PDP-6 (for example) a minicomputers. 
This machine was the ancestore of the PDP-10 (AKA DECsystem10) and of the 
DECsystem20.
My only real contact with a PDP-8 was in the early 80s when they were used 
for wordprocessing.
Jim
>> Jim
>>
>>
>
>
> -- 
> The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
> minimize spam.  Our true address is of the form che...@prodigy.net. 

"Ken Plotkin" <kplotkin@nospam-cox.net> wrote in message 
news:hglrp1lrao12kh0bcti31033iia3ft6vri@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 13:55:25 GMT, "Michael Metcalf"
> <michaelmetcalf@compuserve.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Careful, a byte has no standardized length. The ISO term for an 8-bit byte
>>is 'octet'.
>
> Did a byte used to mean 8 bits, before ISO stepped in?
>
Not necessaruly, only usually.

> ISO does tend to make up new terms, even where the old one was widely
> used and accepted.  E.g., "Hz" instead of "cps".
>
Not true. Hz is an SI unit as defined by the International Union for Weights 
and Measures (approximate name) in Paris. ISO is in Geneva. And Hz is 
clearly more approriate, in the digital age, than something called cycles 
(with its implication of circles, rotation etc.).

Regards,

Mike Metcalf 

Ken Plotkin wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 13:55:25 GMT, "Michael Metcalf"
> <michaelmetcalf@compuserve.com> wrote:
>
>
>> Careful, a byte has no standardized length. The ISO term for an
>> 8-bit byte is 'octet'.
>
> Did a byte used to mean 8 bits, before ISO stepped in?

Well, I'm kind of an old fogey now, and "byte" has always
meant, in my experience, "the size of a character".  So,
I've seen environments with 6-bit bytes, 9-bit bytes, even
12-bit bytes.  It's somewhat like the definition of "word".
We're all aware of platforms with 32-bit words as
contrasted with 60-bit words, 64-bit words, 36-bit
words, etc.

To be sure, 8-bit bytes have probably always been the most
common.  That's always been what IBM used, and they
dominate(d) the market.  I don't recall any Digital Equipment
Corp machine that didn't have 8-bit bytes either, and they
were second only to IBM for many years.

-- 
J. Giles

"I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software
design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously
no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated
that there are no obvious deficiencies."   --  C. A. R. Hoare

Jim wrote:

<snip>
> Yes, of course, but the first one that was advertised as a minicomputer was 
> the PDP-8.  One would hardly call the PDP-6 (for example) a minicomputers. 
> This machine was the ancestore of the PDP-10 (AKA DECsystem10) and of the 
> DECsystem20.
> My only real contact with a PDP-8 was in the early 80s when they were used 
> for wordprocessing.
<snip>
I think the PDP-8e may have been the first computer I actually touched,
circa 1970.  Before that, I had used other machines via punched cards,
TTY, and RJE.

-- 
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam.  Our true address is of the form che...@prodigy.net.

In article <roc073xi7e.ln2@innovative.iinet.net.au>,
Bernd Felsche  <bernie@innovative.iinet.net.au> wrote:
>Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
>
>>On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 05:29:42 +0000 (UTC)
>>Richard Heathfield <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>>> Incidentally, null files are nothing particularly new - they've been used as 
>>> flags many a time.
>
>>Indeed /bin/true on UNIX systems is often an empty file or
>>sometimes a file full of comments.

I once had a student who followed every label in a COBOL program with a
note. ;^)

>The ferpect program! :-)
>
>But it cheats because it relies on a shell interpreter.
>
>Previously, the shortest that I encountered was simply "I"; being
>equivalent to SVCA-11 (supervisor call A number 11) on AMOS.  The
>program simply exited.
>
>That is a directly-executing, stand-alone program so it doesn't
>cheat.

Apropos of nothing in particular, but the TYPE program (similar to UNIX
cat) was unchanged for many years (for that processor type that used
SVCA, SVCB, and SVCC.) The only change ever made to it was the addition
of a program header when program headers became mandatory. Reassembling
for different releases or libraries still generated the same object
code, until mandatory headers that is.
-- 
The more things change, the more they stay insane.

In article <WisH0CnDAwli@malvm9.mala.bc.ca>, nothome@spammers.are.scum
(Malcolm Dunnett) writes:

> In article <egev63-084.ln1@main.anatron.com.au>,
> Russell Shaw <rjshawN_o@s_pam.netspace.net.au> writes:
>
>>> By the way, historically that is not the shortest piece of source
>>> code ever written. Some time ago someone submitted a zero byte C
>>> source code (an empty file) to the obfuscated C contest. Amazingly
>>> gcc recognised it as a valid and legal C source code and compiled
>>> it into an executable. The program, when run, outputs nothing.
>>> Thus it also claims to be the shortest quine (self reproducing
>>> code) in history by printing out itself (nothing). It actually
>>> won the competition. After that, the obfuscated C contest banned
>>> all zero byte source code.
>>
>> All? How many can there be;)
>
>   He should have patented it, then he could charge outrageous
> licensing fees to anyone found to have a zero-length file on
> their system.

Microsoft probably already holds the patent.  The COPY command in
COMMAND.COM and CMD.EXE will not copy a zero-length file; this is
to discourage piracy.

-- 
/~\  cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ /  I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
 X   Top-posted messages will probably be ignored.  See RFC1855.
/ \  HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored.  Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

Michael Metcalf wrote:
> "glen herrmannsfeldt" <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message 
> news:vtWdnUBSSJRflQDeRVn-rQ@comcast.com...
> 
>>dunric@yahoo.com wrote:
>>
>>The PDP-8 is a twelve bit machine.   Do you mean a 1.5 byte
>>program?
>>
> 
> Careful, a byte has no standardized length. The ISO term for an 8-bit byte 
> is 'octet'.

Uff, careful indeed... One of my professors would strangle 
you single-handedly for saying that :)
He claims "byte" is a word that was made up by IBM and 
defined at that time not as a memory word, but as 8 bits. 
Therefore, even thinking of anything like "a 12-bit byte" is 
hardly short of blasphemy. It has to be referred to as 
"one-and a half byte memory word" or "12-bit memory word"
Mind you, I can't be sure he is right. If, however, it is 
true that IBM coined the word byte (which sounds beleivable, 
what with IBM being such a giant back then), then this 
classification makes sense.

Mitja Trampus wrote:
> Michael Metcalf wrote:
....
>> Careful, a byte has no standardized length. The ISO term for an
>> 8-bit byte is 'octet'.
>
> Uff, careful indeed... One of my professors would strangle
> you single-handedly for saying that :)
> He claims "byte" is a word that was made up by IBM and
> defined at that time not as a memory word, but as 8 bits.
> Therefore, even thinking of anything like "a 12-bit byte" is
> hardly short of blasphemy. It has to be referred to as
> "one-and a half byte memory word" or "12-bit memory word"
> Mind you, I can't be sure he is right. If, however, it is
> true that IBM coined the word byte (which sounds beleivable,
> what with IBM being such a giant back then), then this
> classification makes sense.

But, IBM doesn't *own* the word, nor can they control how
it's used in normal discourse.  Words in natural languages mean
what the people trying to communicate mutually agree they
mean.  That's why the ISO (and others) looked for a different
word than 'byte'.  Whether you like it or not, and no matter
where it was originally coined, it now has a meaning similar to
'word' (when used in computing).  That is: the amount of storage
required to store a character (the similarity to 'word' is clear:
that's the size of a default integer or floating point value).
If I had my "druthers", I'd prefer that "word" *always* mean
a 64-bit quantity, use "half-word" for 32-bits, "parcel" for 16-bits,
"byte" for 8-bits, and "nibble" (or "nybble") for 4-bits.  But,
I have to use terms just the others that I'm communicating with.

-- 
J. Giles

"I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software
design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously
no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated
that there are no obvious deficiencies."   --  C. A. R. Hoare

Mitja Trampus wrote:
> Michael Metcalf wrote:
> 
>> "glen herrmannsfeldt" <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message 
>> news:vtWdnUBSSJRflQDeRVn-rQ@comcast.com...
>>
>>> dunric@yahoo.com wrote:
>>>
>>> The PDP-8 is a twelve bit machine.   Do you mean a 1.5 byte
>>> program?
>>>
>>
>> Careful, a byte has no standardized length. The ISO term for an 8-bit 
>> byte is 'octet'.
> 
> 
> Uff, careful indeed... One of my professors would strangle you 
> single-handedly for saying that :)
> He claims "byte" is a word that was made up by IBM and defined at that 
> time not as a memory word, but as 8 bits. Therefore, even thinking of 
> anything like "a 12-bit byte" is hardly short of blasphemy. It has to be 
> referred to as "one-and a half byte memory word" or "12-bit memory word"
> Mind you, I can't be sure he is right. If, however, it is true that IBM 
> coined the word byte (which sounds beleivable, what with IBM being such 
> a giant back then), then this classification makes sense.

The Digial PDP-6, -10 and -20 had "Byte handling instructions" that 
would read and write bytes of arbitrary length anywhere in memory (not 
crossing a word boundary).  The position and size of the byte was 
specified by a general pointer. The pointer could be automatically 
incremented to point to the next byte in memory.

"David Flower" <DavJFlower@AOL.COM> wrote in message 
news:1134376291.652026.237690@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> Reminds me of a story I heard many years ago...
>
> A certain university computing facility (I think this was in the days
> when you submitted a deck of punched cards, and received your output
> the following day) decided to write a compiler that would attempt to
> guess what the students meant to write, and correct the code as it
> thought fit.
> So someone decided to submit the first chapter of Genesis - and it
> compiled.
>
> Dave Flower
>

Simulation Sciences' PROCESS chemical engineering flowsheet simulator. I 
remember wasting many hours on a typo because the interpreter assumed that a 
mistake meant I wanted the default. 

James Giles:

>   Whether you like it or not, and no matter
> where it was originally coined, it now has a meaning similar to
> 'word' (when used in computing).

Whether you like it or not, it has not. For me byte is 8 bits.
Yes, in some meanings (C standard for example) byte is
treated as size of char and can be anything, even 1234 bits
if you only wish, but I am sure 9 of 10 people asked 'byte ?'
will answer 'eight bits' ;P.

-- 
Sc0rpi0
I hated going to weddings.
All the grandmas would poke me saying "You're next".
They stopped that when I started doing it to them at funerals.

"Mitja Trampus" <nun@example.com> wrote in message 
news:wFmnf.20639$h6.717707@news.siol.net...
>>
> Uff, careful indeed... One of my professors would strangle you 
> single-handedly for saying that :)
> He claims "byte" is a word that was made up by IBM and defined at that 
> time not as a memory word, but as 8 bits. Therefore, even thinking of 
> anything like "a 12-bit byte" is hardly short of blasphemy. It has to be 
> referred to as "one-and a half byte memory word" or "12-bit memory word"
> Mind you, I can't be sure he is right. If, however, it is true that IBM 
> coined the word byte (which sounds beleivable, what with IBM being such a 
> giant back then), then this classification makes sense.

Why do we have dictionaries? Shorter OED:

byte n. M20 [Arbitary, based on BIT n, and BITE n.] Computing. A group of 
binary digits (usu. eight) operated as a unit.

Note, for your professor, usually! If someone has the full OED nearby, maybe 
they could look up the first use.

Regards,

Mike Metcalf 

glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
> 
> The PDP-8 is a twelve bit machine.   Do you mean a 1.5 byte
> program?

Or two 6-bit bytes...  Deja Vu all over again.

In article <20051212162128.72cc3fce.steveo@eircom.net>,
steveo@eircom.net (Steve O'Hara-Smith) writes:

> On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 22:06:51 +0800
> Bernd Felsche <bernie@innovative.iinet.net.au> wrote:
>
>> Previously, the shortest that I encountered was simply "I"; being
>> equivalent to SVCA-11 (supervisor call A number 11) on AMOS.  The
>> program simply exited.
>>
>> That is a directly-executing, stand-alone program so it doesn't
>> cheat.
>
> On CP/M the one byte program RST 0 (0xC7) would do exactly that.

And a zero-byte program (i.e. a .COM file with a length of zero)
would just jump to the start of the TPA (location 0x100) without
altering memory.  I kept such a file around because it was the
fastest way to re-run a serially-reusable program (which all of
mine were, of course :-) on a floppy-based system.

-- 
/~\  cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ /  I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
 X   Top-posted messages will probably be ignored.  See RFC1855.
/ \  HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored.  Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

In article <wFmnf.20639$h6.717707@news.siol.net>,
Mitja Trampus  <nun@example.com> wrote:
>Michael Metcalf wrote:
>> "glen herrmannsfeldt" <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message 
>> news:vtWdnUBSSJRflQDeRVn-rQ@comcast.com...
>> 
>>>dunric@yahoo.com wrote:
>>>
>>>The PDP-8 is a twelve bit machine.   Do you mean a 1.5 byte
>>>program?
>> 
>> Careful, a byte has no standardized length. The ISO term for an 8-bit byte 
>> is 'octet'.
>
>Uff, careful indeed... One of my professors would strangle 
>you single-handedly for saying that :)
>He claims "byte" is a word that was made up by IBM and 
>defined at that time not as a memory word, but as 8 bits. 

OED agrees with the professor on 8 bits; its earliest quote for byte is
from 1964 BLAAUW & BROOKS in IBM Systems Jrnl. III. 122.

But others seem to have redefined it since. For example, consider
the following quote (date unknown) from
http://www.terena.nl/library/multiling/euroml/section08.html

"The design [of the ISO 2022 standard] was based on 7-bit bytes, but was 
 extended later to 8-bit bytes."

One of the curses of mathematics (and, it seems, computer science) is 
that words can and do get redefined.

-- 
John Harper, School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, 
Victoria University, PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand
e-mail john.harper@vuw.ac.nz phone (+64)(4)463 5341 fax (+64)(4)463 5045

Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> In article <WisH0CnDAwli@malvm9.mala.bc.ca>, nothome@spammers.are.scum
> (Malcolm Dunnett) writes:
> 
> 
>>In article <egev63-084.ln1@main.anatron.com.au>,
>>Russell Shaw <rjshawN_o@s_pam.netspace.net.au> writes:
>>
>>
>>>>By the way, historically that is not the shortest piece of source
>>>>code ever written. Some time ago someone submitted a zero byte C
>>>>source code (an empty file) to the obfuscated C contest. Amazingly
>>>>gcc recognised it as a valid and legal C source code and compiled
>>>>it into an executable. The program, when run, outputs nothing.
>>>>Thus it also claims to be the shortest quine (self reproducing
>>>>code) in history by printing out itself (nothing). It actually
>>>>won the competition. After that, the obfuscated C contest banned
>>>>all zero byte source code.
>>>
>>>All? How many can there be;)
>>
>>  He should have patented it, then he could charge outrageous
>>licensing fees to anyone found to have a zero-length file on
>>their system.
> 
> 
> Microsoft probably already holds the patent.  The COPY command in
> COMMAND.COM and CMD.EXE will not copy a zero-length file; this is
> to discourage piracy.
> 
That's not true Charlie. There is no exception made for zero-length 
files. Certainly not here under XP Pro. I happened to have a 0-length 
file called babel. At my cmd prompt 'copy babel zero' results in a new 
empty file named zero.

-- 
Joe Wright
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
                     --- Albert Einstein ---

Sc0rpi0 said:

> I am sure 9 of 10 people asked 'byte ?' will answer 'eight bits'

Probably true. Cf Sturgeon's Law.

-- 
Richard Heathfield
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29/7/1999
http://www.cpax.org.uk
email: rjh at above domain (but drop the www, obviously)

>> In 1974, Gustav Larsson, ... decided to attempt to compile a single byte
>> program. For what reasons we cannot know.

>The PDP-8 is a twelve bit machine.   Do you mean a 1.5 byte program?
>The PDP-11 has a one instruction program ... to test all of memory.

The IBM 1620 could CLEAR all of memory with a one-instruction "program".

Of course, once it had done that, the machine had to be rebooted manually.
-- 
--Myron A. Calhoun.
Five boxes preserve our freedoms:  soap, ballot, witness, jury, and cartridge
PhD EE (retired).   "Barbershop" tenor.   CDL(PTXS).  W0PBV.   (785) 539-4448
NRA Life Member and Certified Instructor (Home Firearm Safety, Rifle, Pistol)

>>A certain university computing facility ... decided to write a compiler
>>that would attempt to guess what the students meant to write, and
>>correct the code as it thought fit.

>Simulation Sciences' PROCESS chemical engineering flowsheet simulator....

University of Waterloo.

WATFIV (WATerloo's Fortran IV compiler).
WATBOL (WATerloo's coBOL compiler).

and probably others, but I've forgotten.
-- 
--Myron A. Calhoun.
Five boxes preserve our freedoms:  soap, ballot, witness, jury, and cartridge
PhD EE (retired).   "Barbershop" tenor.   CDL(PTXS).  W0PBV.   (785) 539-4448
NRA Life Member and Certified Instructor (Home Firearm Safety, Rifle, Pistol)

"John Harper" <harper@mcs.vuw.ac.nz> wrote in message news:1134435527.202067@bats.mcs.vuw.ac.nz...
 ....
> >Uff, careful indeed... One of my professors would strangle 
> >you single-handedly for saying that :)
> >He claims "byte" is a word that was made up by IBM and 
> >defined at that time not as a memory word, but as 8 bits. 
> 
> OED agrees with the professor on 8 bits; its earliest quote for byte is
> from 1964 BLAAUW & BROOKS in IBM Systems Jrnl. III. 122.
> 
> But others seem to have redefined it since. ....

An earlier quote (1962) also from Blaauw and Brooks via Buchholz
(in "Planning a Computer System") gives a more general definition of "byte"
merely as a group of contiguous bits.  True enough that Stretch and
then S/360 internally, and influentially, standardized on 8 bits.

See message ID 378810A2.4CB@bell-labs.com for the quote.

    Dennis

"John Harper" <harper@mcs.vuw.ac.nz> wrote in message news:1134435527.202067@bats.mcs.vuw.ac.nz...
 ....
> >Uff, careful indeed... One of my professors would strangle 
> >you single-handedly for saying that :)
> >He claims "byte" is a word that was made up by IBM and 
> >defined at that time not as a memory word, but as 8 bits. 
> 
> OED agrees with the professor on 8 bits; its earliest quote for byte is
> from 1964 BLAAUW & BROOKS in IBM Systems Jrnl. III. 122.
> 
> But others seem to have redefined it since. ....

An earlier quote (1962) also from Blaauw and Brooks via Buchholz
(in "Planning a Computer System") gives a more general definition of "byte"
merely as a group of contiguous bits.  True enough that Stretch and
then S/360 internally, and influentially, standardized on 8 bits.

See message ID 378810A2.4CB@bell-labs.com for the quote.

    Dennis

mcalhoun@ksu.edu wrote:

(snip)

> University of Waterloo.

> WATFIV (WATerloo's Fortran IV compiler).
> WATBOL (WATerloo's coBOL compiler).

Well, WATFIV came after WATFOR, and I always thought it was because FIVE 
came after FOUR.  (I think that is the way it was explained to me at the 
time.)  There were rumors for years about a Fortran V version.

I am not sure about calling WATFIV a Fortran IV compiler, with CHARACTER 
variable, expressions in I/O (especially the O) lists, and many other 
Fortran 77 features many years before Fortran 77, but it was designed to 
include the IBM Fortran IV features.

-- glen

Dennis Ritchie wrote:
> An earlier quote (1962) also from Blaauw and Brooks via Buchholz
> (in "Planning a Computer System") gives a more general definition of "byte"
> merely as a group of contiguous bits.  True enough that Stretch and
> then S/360 internally, and influentially, standardized on 8 bits.

While the System/360 byte size is definitely 8 bits, the situation on
Stretch (the IBM 7030 Data Processing System) is more complicated.
The floating point arithmetic instructions only deal with whole words
(64 bits).  But the non-floating arithmetic and logical operations are
called Variable Field Length (VFL) instructions.  They can operate on
operands with total lengths 1-64 bits, but subdivide the operand into
bytes of 1-8 bits.  The lenth and byte size are encoded in six bit and
three bit fields in the instruction, respectively.

From section 4.3 of Buchholz et al.: "'Byte' denotes a group of bits
used to encode a character, or the number of bits transmitted in
parallel to and from input-output units.  A term other than 'character'
is used here because a given character code may be represented in
different applications by more than one code, and different codes may
use different numbers of bits (i.e., different byte sizes).  In
input-output transmission the grouping of bits may be completely
arbitrary and have no relation to actual characters.  (The term is
coined from 'bite', but respelled to avoid accidental mutation to
'bit')."

From section 7.4 of Buchholz et al.: "The natural length of bytes
varies."  [..]  "The 7030 is unique in that the byte size is completely
variable from 1 to 8 bits, as specified with each VFL instruction.
Bytes may also overlap word boundaries."

Eric Smith wrote:

(snip from the IBM 7030)

> From section 4.3 of Buchholz et al.: "'Byte' denotes a group of bits
> used to encode a character, or the number of bits transmitted in
> parallel to and from input-output units.  A term other than 'character'
> is used here because a given character code may be represented in
> different applications by more than one code, and different codes may
> use different numbers of bits (i.e., different byte sizes).  In
> input-output transmission the grouping of bits may be completely
> arbitrary and have no relation to actual characters.  (The term is
> coined from 'bite', but respelled to avoid accidental mutation to
> 'bit')."

> From section 7.4 of Buchholz et al.: "The natural length of bytes
> varies."  [..]  "The 7030 is unique in that the byte size is completely
> variable from 1 to 8 bits, as specified with each VFL instruction.
> Bytes may also overlap word boundaries."

In C a byte is >= eight bits, and on the 7030 it is <= eight bits.

That seems to leave eight as the only choice left, especially if one 
decides to write a C compiler for the 7030.  Isn't it about time?

(comp.sys.dec removed, comp.lang.c added.)

-- glen

> To be sure, 8-bit bytes have probably always been the most
> common.  That's always been what IBM used, and they
> dominate(d) the market.  I don't recall any Digital Equipment
> Corp machine that didn't have 8-bit bytes either, and they
> were second only to IBM for many years.

DEC's 36-bit machines could use any "byte" length - the requisite
instructions have a field for the byte width, with the position field
(within a word) being automatically incremented by this amount. Byte
widths in wide use were 5, 6, and 7 bits, with 8 bits only being used
for interoperability with that other company's equipment.

	Jan

Gerry Quinn wrote:
> In article <1134362645.916762.143340@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> slebetman@gmail.com says...
>
> > By the way, historically that is not the shortest piece of source code
> > ever written. Some time ago someone submitted a zero byte C source code
> > (an empty file) to the obfuscated C contest. Amazingly gcc recognised
> > it as a valid and legal C source code and compiled it into an
> > executable. The program, when run, outputs nothing. Thus it also claims
> > to be the shortest quine (self reproducing code) in history by printing
> > out itself (nothing). It actually won the competition. After that, the
> > obfuscated C contest banned all zero byte source code.
>
> Surely a zero-byte program is ineligible anyway, as it is not
> obfuscated in any way?
>

It's actually the 1994 winner for "worst abuse of rules". Go to:

http://www.ioccc.org/years.html

and check out the 1994 entry smr.c

dunric@yahoo.com wrote:
> >>He decided to attempt to compile a single byte
> >>program. For what reasons we cannot know.
> ? - "42"
>

IMHO the special syntax ? should return 42 for compilers of all
programming languages lest the mice get the wrong answer ;-)

Amazingly, the first six bits of an ethernet preamble is also 42!

Richard Heathfield wrote
(in article 
<dnli4c$1tb$1@nwrdmz01.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com>):

> Sc0rpi0 said:
> 
>> I am sure 9 of 10 people asked 'byte ?' will answer 'eight bits'
> 
> Probably true. Cf Sturgeon's Law.

Most people I know that mean exactly 8 bits say "octet".


-- 
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
"The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those 
 who have not got it."  - George Bernard Shaw

On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 23:48:18 -0800
glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

> In C a byte is >= eight bits, and on the 7030 it is <= eight bits.

	Last time I looked C made no mention of byte at all - char yes
byte no.

> (comp.sys.dec removed, comp.lang.c added.)

	Hmm and followup set to comp.lang.fortran - tut-tut.

-- 
C:>WIN                                      |   Directable Mirror Arrays
The computer obeys and wins.                | A better way to focus the sun
You lose and Bill collects.                 |    licences available see
                                            |    http://www.sohara.org/

Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

> On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 23:48:18 -0800
> glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> 
> > In C a byte is >= eight bits, and on the 7030 it is <= eight bits.
> 
> 	Last time I looked C made no mention of byte at all - char yes
> byte no.

#   3.6
# 1 byte
#   addressable unit of data storage large enough to hold any member of
#   the basic character set of the execution environment

Richard

Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 23:48:18 -0800
> glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> 
> > In C a byte is >= eight bits, and on the 7030 it is <= eight bits.
> 
>         Last time I looked C made no mention of byte at all
> - char yes byte no.

Try looking harder.

-- 
pete

Hi.

I'm a bit of an old fogey myself. Back in the late 70's, I worked on
the DECsystem-10 at my college. It had 36-bit words and ASCII character
encoding (7 bits) was typically used. When programming in assembly
language, you could set up a "byte pointer", which contained the
location of the buffer to be traversed, the index of the byte for
get/set operations, and the size of the bytes. In your code, you could
increment/decrement the byte pointer and do get/set operations on the
bytes. We typically used 7-bit ASCII characters, but DEC used "SIXBIT"
encoding (with only upper-case letters like a Cyber) for system calls,
e.g. file names. If you were needing EBCDIC, you could set up a pointer
for 8-bit bytes. Bytes could not cross word boundaries; in SIXBIT, you
got 6 per word; in ASCII, 7 per word (with one unused bit), in EBCDIC,
4 per word (with 4 unused bits). If your application warrented it and
you were so inclined, you could make bytes of any length from 1 to 35
bits, and the CPU would elegantly handle it!

I always thought the byte pointer was a nice abstraction for an
assembly language programmer -- it made a hard problem easy. Once the
pointer was set up, the code for traversal routines was independent of
the character set (or whatever you were traversing). Although I suspect
the IBM 8-bit byte had a lot to do with the current "standard"
nomenclature, I always thought it was the 8-bit microprocessor (and its
descendants) that settled the issue...

FWIW.
--vic

James Giles wrote:
> Ken Plotkin wrote:
> > On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 13:55:25 GMT, "Michael Metcalf"
> > <michaelmetcalf@compuserve.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Careful, a byte has no standardized length. The ISO term for an
> >> 8-bit byte is 'octet'.
> >
> > Did a byte used to mean 8 bits, before ISO stepped in?
>
> Well, I'm kind of an old fogey now, and "byte" has always
> meant, in my experience, "the size of a character".  So,
> I've seen environments with 6-bit bytes, 9-bit bytes, even
> 12-bit bytes.  It's somewhat like the definition of "word".
> We're all aware of platforms with 32-bit words as
> contrasted with 60-bit words, 64-bit words, 36-bit
> words, etc.
>
> To be sure, 8-bit bytes have probably always been the most
> common.  That's always been what IBM used, and they
> dominate(d) the market.  I don't recall any Digital Equipment
> Corp machine that didn't have 8-bit bytes either, and they
> were second only to IBM for many years.
>
> --
> J. Giles
>
> "I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software
> design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously
> no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated
> that there are no obvious deficiencies."   --  C. A. R. Hoare

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:31:52 GMT
rlb@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl (Richard Bos) wrote:

> Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 23:48:18 -0800
> > glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> > 
> > > In C a byte is >= eight bits, and on the 7030 it is <= eight bits.
> > 
> > 	Last time I looked C made no mention of byte at all - char yes
> > byte no.
> 
> #   3.6
> # 1 byte
> #   addressable unit of data storage large enough to hold any member of
> #   the basic character set of the execution environment

	Hmm OK - part of this new fangled ISO redefinition of the C
language I presume.

	I see nothing there that requires it to be eight bits or more
though, it looks like seven would do fine.

-- 
C:>WIN                                      |   Directable Mirror Arrays
The computer obeys and wins.                | A better way to focus the sun
You lose and Bill collects.                 |    licences available see
                                            |    http://www.sohara.org/

In article <HVmnf.148847$qk4.32926@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>, 
    "James Giles" <jamesgiles@worldnet.att.net> writes:
> 
> But, IBM doesn't *own* the word, nor can they control how
> it's used in normal discourse.  Words in natural languages mean
> what the people trying to communicate mutually agree they
> mean.

   True. And "way back when" we all agreed that a byte was always
8 bits. I don't recall anybody in the 70's ever talking about
the 12 bit word on a PDP-8 ( or the 16 bit word on a PDP-11 ) being
a "byte".

  That's why the ISO (and others) looked for a different
> word than 'byte'.  Whether you like it or not, and no matter
> where it was originally coined, it now has a meaning similar to
> 'word' (when used in computing).  That is: the amount of storage
> required to store a character

    Not all character sets are 8-bit, so your definition is
somewhat suspect. I don't think I've ever seen any computer manufacturer
refer to a byte as anything other than 8 bits.

> (the similarity to 'word' is clear:
> that's the size of a default integer or floating point value).
> If I had my "druthers", I'd prefer that "word" *always* mean
> a 64-bit quantity, use "half-word" for 32-bits, "parcel" for 16-bits,
> "byte" for 8-bits, and "nibble" (or "nybble") for 4-bits.  But,
> I have to use terms just the others that I'm communicating with.
> 

   You obviously didn't spend much time with PDP-11's, VAXen
or Alphas, did you. In all those worlds ( regardless of native
sizes ) a "Word" is 16 bits, a "longword" is 32 bits and a
"quadword" is 64 bits. And, of course, a "byte" is 8 bits.

In article <1134435527.202067@bats.mcs.vuw.ac.nz>, harper@mcs.vuw.ac.nz
(John Harper) writes:

> One of the curses of mathematics (and, it seems, computer science) is
> that words can and do get redefined.

Ah, but where it's really a curse is in politics and marketing.

    "When _I_ use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful
    tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more
    nor less."  -- Through the Looking Glass

    "Go to, let us go down and confound their language."
       -- Genesis 11:7

-- 
/~\  cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ /  I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
 X   Top-posted messages will probably be ignored.  See RFC1855.
/ \  HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored.  Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:31:52 GMT
> rlb@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl (Richard Bos) wrote:
>
> > Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
> >
> > > On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 23:48:18 -0800
> > > glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> > >
> > > > In C a byte is >= eight bits, and on the 7030 it is <= eight bits.
> > >
> > > 	Last time I looked C made no mention of byte at all - char yes
> > > byte no.
> >
> > #   3.6
> > # 1 byte
> > #   addressable unit of data storage large enough to hold any member of
> > #   the basic character set of the execution environment
>
> 	Hmm OK - part of this new fangled ISO redefinition of the C
> language I presume.
>
> 	I see nothing there that requires it to be eight bits or more
> though, it looks like seven would do fine.
>

from n869 documentation showing minimum values for
numerical limits:

         -- number  of  bits for smallest object that is not a bit-
            field (byte)
            CHAR_BIT                         8

So >= 8 bits per char (byte) is needed..

-David

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Hash: SHA1

David Resnick wrote:
> Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> 
>>On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:31:52 GMT
>>rlb@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl (Richard Bos) wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 23:48:18 -0800
>>>>glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>In C a byte is >= eight bits, and on the 7030 it is <= eight bits.
>>>>
>>>>	Last time I looked C made no mention of byte at all - char yes
>>>>byte no.
>>>
>>>#   3.6
>>># 1 byte
>>>#   addressable unit of data storage large enough to hold any member of
>>>#   the basic character set of the execution environment
>>
>>	Hmm OK - part of this new fangled ISO redefinition of the C
>>language I presume.
>>
>>	I see nothing there that requires it to be eight bits or more
>>though, it looks like seven would do fine.
>>
> 
> 
> from n869 documentation showing minimum values for
> numerical limits:
> 
>          -- number  of  bits for smallest object that is not a bit-
>             field (byte)
>             CHAR_BIT                         8
> 
> So >= 8 bits per char (byte) is needed..

Also by implication

  ? minimum value for an object of type signed char
    SCHAR_MIN -127 // -(27 - 1)
  ? maximum value for an object of type signed char
    SCHAR_MAX +127 // 27 - 1
  ? maximum value for an object of type unsigned char
    UCHAR_MAX 255 // 28 - 1

and

  If the value of an object of type char is treated as a signed integer
  when used in an expression, the value of CHAR_MIN shall be the same as
  that of SCHAR_MIN and the value of CHAR_MAX shall be the same as that
  of SCHAR_MAX. Otherwise, the value of CHAR_MIN shall be 0 and the
  value of CHAR_MAX shall be the same as that of UCHAR_MAX.15) The value
  UCHAR_MAX shall equal (2^CHAR_BIT) - 1.

none of which can be satisfied by CHAR_BIT < 8


- --

Lew Pitcher, IT Specialist, Enterprise Data Systems
Enterprise Technology Solutions, TD Bank Financial Group

(Opinions expressed here are my own, not my employer's)
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glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
> Eric Smith wrote:

>> From section 7.4 of Buchholz et al.: "The natural length of bytes
>> varies."  [..]  "The 7030 is unique in that the byte size is completely
>> variable from 1 to 8 bits, as specified with each VFL instruction.
>> Bytes may also overlap word boundaries."

It is worth noting that on the PDP-6 and PDP-10, a byte was completely 
variable from 1-36 bits, with the instruction set having a rich set for 
handling bytes through a byte pointer.  The 7030 may have been unique in 
restricting the byte length to at most 8 bits.
> 
> 
> In C a byte is >= eight bits, and on the 7030 it is <= eight bits.
> 
> That seems to leave eight as the only choice left, especially if one 
> decides to write a C compiler for the 7030.  Isn't it about time?

> (comp.sys.dec removed, comp.lang.c added.)

Did you remove comp.sys.dec to avoid having the obvious error from 
Buchholz et al. unmasked?

Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:31:52 GMT
> rlb@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl (Richard Bos) wrote:
>>#   3.6
>># 1 byte
>>#   addressable unit of data storage large enough to hold any member of
>>#   the basic character set of the execution environment
> 
> 
> 	Hmm OK - part of this new fangled ISO redefinition of the C
> language I presume.

If you think that 16 year-old standards are new-fangled, you have a 
serious problem.

>>> mainframe computer.  In point of fact, it was the very first 
>>> minicomputer.
>>                                                     ^^^^^^^^^^
>>
>> There were others in the PDP series before it.
>Yes, of course, but the first one that was advertised as a minicomputer was 
>the PDP-8.  

IIRC it was 1970 and the PDP-8s was announced as "the world's first under $10,000 minicomputer"
(MIT tuition was $2150 and a top of the line Cadillac was about $8500).

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 18:23:03 GMT
Martin Ambuhl <mambuhl@earthlink.net> wrote:

> Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> > On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:31:52 GMT
> > rlb@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl (Richard Bos) wrote:
> >>#   3.6
> >># 1 byte
> >>#   addressable unit of data storage large enough to hold any member of
> >>#   the basic character set of the execution environment
> > 
> > 
> > 	Hmm OK - part of this new fangled ISO redefinition of the C
> > language I presume.
> 
> If you think that 16 year-old standards are new-fangled, you have a 
> serious problem.

	I am posting from alt.folklore.computers after all :)

-- 
C:>WIN                                      |   Directable Mirror Arrays
The computer obeys and wins.                | A better way to focus the sun
You lose and Bill collects.                 |    licences available see
                                            |    http://www.sohara.org/

"David Resnick" <lndresnick@gmail.com> writes:
> from n869 documentation showing minimum values for
> numerical limits:
> 
>          -- number  of  bits for smallest object that is not a bit-
>             field (byte)
>             CHAR_BIT                         8

On a 7030, the smallest object that is not a bitfield would be a single
bit.  The 7030 allows integer and logical operations on objects at any
bit address in main memory, with any size from 1 to 64 bits.

The TMS34020 also uses bit addressed memory, as have other machines.

glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> writes:
> In C a byte is >= eight bits, and on the 7030 it is <= eight bits.
> 
> That seems to leave eight as the only choice left, especially if one
> decides to write a C compiler for the 7030.  Isn't it about time?

There is no requirement that a C byte be mapped to a machine byte.

Martin Ambuhl wrote:
> 
> Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> > On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:31:52 GMT
> > rlb@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl (Richard Bos) wrote:
> >>#   3.6
> >># 1 byte
> >>#   addressable unit of data storage large
> >>#   enough to hold any member of
> >>#   the basic character set of the execution environment
> >
> >
> >       Hmm OK - part of this new fangled ISO redefinition of the C
> > language I presume.
> 
> If you think that 16 year-old standards are new-fangled, you have a
> serious problem.

And the meaning of the return value of the sizeof operator
has always been defined in terms of bytes.

-- 
pete

Well, David, if it was an urban legend and God wrote the message, it
might be an example of EVP, except relating to a computer. I have heard
of events whereby God has communicated to people over the old BBC Micro
computers in the 1980s, so if it really happened as suggested by the
urban legend, then compiling the "@" symbol would not be viable because
God himself wrote the message. I am assuming it is not an easter egg
left by a PDP-8 programmer, nor it is something a Fortran IV creator
would have left in the source code for the compiler. The only
explanations which cover this are: Either Gustav was hallucinating
(PDP-8 programmers were known to be overworked/taking drugs) or God
really did communicate with Gustav. We cannot be certain, however,
because his diary of the events has since been lost. Unfortunately,
this is just computer lore.

Paul

In comp.lang.c Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> wrote [in re "byte"]:
> 
> 	Hmm OK - part of this new fangled ISO redefinition of the C
> language I presume.

Not quite: K&R (the original) 7.2:

	The sizeof operator yields the size, in bytes, of its operand. 
	(A byte is undefined by the language except in terms of the
	value of sizeof.  However, in all existing implementations a
	byte is the space required to hold a char.)

-Larry Jones

Hey!  What's the matter?  Can't you take a joke?!  It was a JOKE! -- Calvin

On 2005-12-13, Eric Smith <eric@brouhaha.com> wrote:
> "David Resnick" <lndresnick@gmail.com> writes:
>> from n869 documentation showing minimum values for
>> numerical limits:
>> 
>>          -- number  of  bits for smallest object that is not a bit-
>>             field (byte)
>>             CHAR_BIT                         8
>
> On a 7030, the smallest object that is not a bitfield would be a single
> bit. 

clearly, if this native access for single bits is used in C, it would be
as a bitfield, and not an object that is not a bitfield.

Malcolm Dunnett wrote:

> In article <HVmnf.148847$qk4.32926@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>, 
>     "James Giles" <jamesgiles@worldnet.att.net> writes:
> 
>>But, IBM doesn't *own* the word, nor can they control how
>>it's used in normal discourse.  Words in natural languages mean
>>what the people trying to communicate mutually agree they
>>mean.
> 
> 
>    True. And "way back when" we all agreed that a byte was always
> 8 bits. I don't recall anybody in the 70's ever talking about
> the 12 bit word on a PDP-8 ( or the 16 bit word on a PDP-11 ) being
> a "byte".
> 

"Way back when" the PDP-10 "byte" instructions operated (IIRC) on 
variable-length or user-definable bytes, and the mnemonics used "byte", 
ILDB (Increment and Load Byte) for example.

David Resnick wrote:

> Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> 
>>On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:31:52 GMT
>>rlb@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl (Richard Bos) wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 23:48:18 -0800
>>>>glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>In C a byte is >= eight bits, and on the 7030 it is <= eight bits.
>>>>
>>>>	Last time I looked C made no mention of byte at all - char yes
>>>>byte no.
>>>
>>>#   3.6
>>># 1 byte
>>>#   addressable unit of data storage large enough to hold any member of
>>>#   the basic character set of the execution environment
>>
>>	Hmm OK - part of this new fangled ISO redefinition of the C
>>language I presume.
>>
>>	I see nothing there that requires it to be eight bits or more
>>though, it looks like seven would do fine.
>>
> 
> 
> from n869 documentation showing minimum values for
> numerical limits:
> 
>          -- number  of  bits for smallest object that is not a bit-
>             field (byte)
>             CHAR_BIT                         8
> 
> So >= 8 bits per char (byte) is needed..
> 

Unless you use a 6-bit character set.

Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:

> David Resnick wrote:
>
>> numerical limits:
>>          -- number  of  bits for smallest object that is not a bit-
>>             field (byte)
>>             CHAR_BIT                         8
>> So >= 8 bits per char (byte) is needed..
>
> Unless you use a 6-bit character set.

Please follow along.  The C standard states that each byte
contains at least 8 bits.  In C, a char occupies one byte.

Furthermore, you cannot use a 6-bit character set for C, because
5.2.1 Character Sets states the following:

    3    Both the basic source and basic execution character sets
         shall have the following members: the 26 uppercase
         letters of the Latin alphabet
                 A B C D E F G H I J K L M
                 N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
         the 26 lowercase letters of the Latin alphabet
                 a b c d e f g h i j k l m
                 n o p q r s t u v w x y z
         the 10 decimal digits
                 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
         the following 29 graphic characters
                 ! " # % & ' ( ) * + , - . / :
                 ; < = > ? [ \ ] ^ _ { | } ~
         the space character, and control characters representing
         horizontal tab, vertical tab, and form feed.

That's significantly more than 64 characters right there.
-- 
"I don't have C&V for that handy, but I've got Dan Pop."
--E. Gibbons

dunric@yahoo.com wrote:
> Well, David, if it was an urban legend and God wrote the message, it
> might be an example of EVP, except relating to a computer. I have heard
> of events whereby God has communicated to people over the old BBC Micro
> computers in the 1980s, so if it really happened as suggested by the
> urban legend, then compiling the "@" symbol would not be viable because
> God himself wrote the message. I am assuming it is not an easter egg
> left by a PDP-8 programmer, nor it is something a Fortran IV creator
> would have left in the source code for the compiler. The only
> explanations which cover this are: Either Gustav was hallucinating
> (PDP-8 programmers were known to be overworked/taking drugs) or God
> really did communicate with Gustav. We cannot be certain, however,
> because his diary of the events has since been lost. Unfortunately,
> this is just computer lore.
> 
> Paul
> 
Heeee.. do not take the name of a BEEP (short for bbc micro) in vain!!
Stil have got 3 working units.....

Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:

> On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:31:52 GMT
> rlb@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl (Richard Bos) wrote:
> 
> 
>>Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 23:48:18 -0800
>>>glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>In C a byte is >= eight bits, and on the 7030 it is <= eight bits.
>>>
>>>	Last time I looked C made no mention of byte at all - char yes
>>>byte no.
>>
>>#   3.6
>># 1 byte
>>#   addressable unit of data storage large enough to hold any member of
>>#   the basic character set of the execution environment
> 
> 
> 	Hmm OK - part of this new fangled ISO redefinition of the C
> language I presume.
> 
> 	I see nothing there that requires it to be eight bits or more
> though, it looks like seven would do fine.
> 
If CDC were still around, maybe even six ...

-- 
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam.  Our true address is of the form che...@prodigy.net.

John Harper wrote:

> In article <wFmnf.20639$h6.717707@news.siol.net>,
> Mitja Trampus  <nun@example.com> wrote:
> 
>>Michael Metcalf wrote:
>>
>>>"glen herrmannsfeldt" <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message 
>>>news:vtWdnUBSSJRflQDeRVn-rQ@comcast.com...
>>>
>>>
>>>>dunric@yahoo.com wrote:
>>>>
>>>>The PDP-8 is a twelve bit machine.   Do you mean a 1.5 byte
>>>>program?
>>>
>>>Careful, a byte has no standardized length. The ISO term for an 8-bit byte 
>>>is 'octet'.
>>
>>Uff, careful indeed... One of my professors would strangle 
>>you single-handedly for saying that :)
>>He claims "byte" is a word that was made up by IBM and 
>>defined at that time not as a memory word, but as 8 bits. 
> 
> 
> OED agrees with the professor on 8 bits; its earliest quote for byte is
> from 1964 BLAAUW & BROOKS in IBM Systems Jrnl. III. 122.
> 
> But others seem to have redefined it since. For example, consider
> the following quote (date unknown) from
> http://www.terena.nl/library/multiling/euroml/section08.html
> 
> "The design [of the ISO 2022 standard] was based on 7-bit bytes, but was 
>  extended later to 8-bit bytes."
> 
> One of the curses of mathematics (and, it seems, computer science) is 
> that words can and do get redefined.
> 
Isn't that process called "overloading?"

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Ben Pfaff wrote:

> Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>David Resnick wrote:
>>
>>
>>>numerical limits:
>>>         -- number  of  bits for smallest object that is not a bit-
>>>            field (byte)
>>>            CHAR_BIT                         8
>>>So >= 8 bits per char (byte) is needed..
>>
>>Unless you use a 6-bit character set.
> 
> 
> Please follow along.  The C standard states that each byte
> contains at least 8 bits.  In C, a char occupies one byte.

Perhaps the C standard, despite being now authoritative, does
not reflect all that C could be.

> 
> Furthermore, you cannot use a 6-bit character set for C, because
> 5.2.1 Character Sets states the following:
> 
>     3    Both the basic source and basic execution character sets
>          shall have the following members: the 26 uppercase
>          letters of the Latin alphabet
>                  A B C D E F G H I J K L M
>                  N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
>          the 26 lowercase letters of the Latin alphabet
>                  a b c d e f g h i j k l m
>                  n o p q r s t u v w x y z
>          the 10 decimal digits
>                  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
>          the following 29 graphic characters
>                  ! " # % & ' ( ) * + , - . / :
>                  ; < = > ? [ \ ] ^ _ { | } ~
>          the space character, and control characters representing
>          horizontal tab, vertical tab, and form feed.
> 
> That's significantly more than 64 characters right there.


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On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 23:13:01 GMT
lawrence.jones@ugs.com wrote:

> In comp.lang.c Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> wrote [in re "byte"]:
> > 
> > 	Hmm OK - part of this new fangled ISO redefinition of the C
> > language I presume.
> 
> Not quite: K&R (the original) 7.2:
> 
> 	The sizeof operator yields the size, in bytes, of its operand. 
> 	(A byte is undefined by the language except in terms of the
> 	value of sizeof.  However, in all existing implementations a
> 	byte is the space required to hold a char.)

	Oh yummy I had forgottem that paragraph (someone borrowed my
K&R some time ago and it never came back). OK so C (the real one) did
mention bytes and explicitly declared them to be of undefined size.

-- 
C:>WIN                                      |   Directable Mirror Arrays
The computer obeys and wins.                | A better way to focus the sun
You lose and Bill collects.                 |    licences available see
                                            |    http://www.sohara.org/

Martin Ambuhl wrote:

(snip, I wrote)

>> That seems to leave eight as the only choice left, especially if one 
>> decides to write a C compiler for the 7030.  Isn't it about time?

>> (comp.sys.dec removed, comp.lang.c added.)

> Did you remove comp.sys.dec to avoid having the obvious error from 
> Buchholz et al. unmasked?

I wanted to add comp.lang.c, and my news reader only wanted four groups.
Instead of figuring out how to get more in, I removed one.

-- glen

lawrence.jones@ugs.com writes:

> In comp.lang.c Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> wrote [in re "byte"]:
> > 
> > 	Hmm OK - part of this new fangled ISO redefinition of the C
> > language I presume.
> 
> Not quite: K&R (the original) 7.2:
> 
> 	The sizeof operator yields the size, in bytes, of its operand. 
> 	(A byte is undefined by the language except in terms of the
> 	value of sizeof.  However, in all existing implementations a
> 	byte is the space required to hold a char.)

That's interesting.  The way it's written it seems clear that K&R
originally distinguished between the size of a byte and the size
required to hold a char.

In article <bkEnf.3767$3Z.2955@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net>,
   Martin Ambuhl <mambuhl@earthlink.net> wrote:
>Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
>> On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:31:52 GMT
>> rlb@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl (Richard Bos) wrote:
>>>#   3.6
>>># 1 byte
>>>#   addressable unit of data storage large enough to hold any member of
>>>#   the basic character set of the execution environment
>> 
>> 
>> 	Hmm OK - part of this new fangled ISO redefinition of the C
>> language I presume.
>
>If you think that 16 year-old standards are new-fangled, you have a 
>serious problem.

Son, you have a worse problem if you think that knowledge
needs to be ignored if it's old.

/BAH

jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> 
> In article <bkEnf.3767$3Z.2955@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net>,
>    Martin Ambuhl <mambuhl@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> >> On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:31:52 GMT
> >> rlb@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl (Richard Bos) wrote:
> >>>#   3.6
> >>># 1 byte
> >>>#   addressable unit of data storage
> >>>#   large enough to hold any member of
> >>>#   the basic character set of the execution environment
> >>
> >>
> >>      Hmm OK - part of this new fangled ISO redefinition of the C
> >> language I presume.
> >
> >If you think that 16 year-old standards are new-fangled, you have a
> >serious problem.
> 
> Son, you have a worse problem if you think that knowledge
> needs to be ignored if it's old.

No old knowledge was displayed.

Steve O'Hara-Smith had said
    "Last time I looked C made no mention of byte at all",
which was just simply the result of not looking hard enough
or not remembering correctly.
He said that in response to 
    "In C a byte is >= eight bits",
which happens to be the case, 
and has been for at least the last 16 years.

-- 
pete

On Wed, 14 Dec 2005 13:42:07 GMT
pete <pfiland@mindspring.com> wrote:

> jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> > 
> > Son, you have a worse problem if you think that knowledge
> > needs to be ignored if it's old.
> 
> No old knowledge was displayed.
> 
> Steve O'Hara-Smith had said
>     "Last time I looked C made no mention of byte at all",
> which was just simply the result of not looking hard enough
> or not remembering correctly.

	Not remembering correctly - I had forgotten that the return
of sizeof was in bytes.

> He said that in response to 
>     "In C a byte is >= eight bits",
> which happens to be the case, 

	However those bytes were of undefined size until ISO changed
things.

> and has been for at least the last 16 years.

	I note that even in current C there is no type called byte, I
could argue that the term is only in the standards documents and not
in the language itself.

-- 
C:>WIN                                      |   Directable Mirror Arrays
The computer obeys and wins.                | A better way to focus the sun
You lose and Bill collects.                 |    licences available see
                                            |    http://www.sohara.org/

In article <439F1F04.8E0AA2FA@alum.mit.edu> on Tuesday 13 December 2005
14:20, Kevin G. Rhoads wrote:

> IIRC it was 1970 and the PDP-8s was announced as "the world's first under
> $10,000 minicomputer" (MIT tuition was $2150 

TDM!

-- 
Roland Hutchinson              Will play viola da gamba for food.

NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to
remove spam.  If your message looks like spam I may not see it.

Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
 
>         I note that even in current C there is no type called byte, I
> could argue that the term is only in the standards documents and not
> in the language itself.

I see what you mean.

-- 
pete

jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> In article <bkEnf.3767$3Z.2955@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net>,
>    Martin Ambuhl <mambuhl@earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
>>Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
>>
>>>On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:31:52 GMT
>>>rlb@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl (Richard Bos) wrote:
>>>
>>>>#   3.6
>>>># 1 byte
>>>>#   addressable unit of data storage large enough to hold any member of
>>>>#   the basic character set of the execution environment
>>>
>>>
>>>	Hmm OK - part of this new fangled ISO redefinition of the C
>>>language I presume.
>>
>>If you think that 16 year-old standards are new-fangled, you have a 
>>serious problem.
> 
> 
> Son, you have a worse problem if you think that knowledge
> needs to be ignored if it's old.

Where the hell did that come from?  What strange leaps of illogic did 
you use to decided that I thought "that knowledge needs to be ignored if 
it's old"?  And just how much over 80 are you that you think it 
appropriate to address me as "Son"?

CJT <abujlehc@prodigy.net> wrote:

> Right, but how does that square with the claim that the capability was
> left out of copy in order to discourage piracy?  Requiring a pirate to
> put an "x" in front of a command doesn't seem much of a hurdle.

In short, that claim was just speculation, and I'd say pretty weak
speculation. I seriously doubt that had anything to do with the reasons.

My speculation (also just speculation, but I personally think mine more
plausible - discount as you like) is that either someone originally
thought it pointless to make a file with no content, or perhaps even
that the behavior was just an acccident.

-- 
Richard Maine                     | Good judgment comes from experience;
email: my first.last at org.domain| experience comes from bad judgment.
org: nasa, domain: gov            |       -- Mark Twain

In article <439FA0C5.7080207@prodigy.net>, CJT  <abujlehc@prodigy.net> wrote:
>John Harper wrote:
>
>> One of the curses of mathematics (and, it seems, computer science) is 
>> that words can and do get redefined.
>> 
>Isn't that process called "overloading?"

Not necessarily. Overloading can be disambiguated by the context (as in 
a standard-conforming program). An example of what I was complaining 
about was "continuous", which has been defined in several inconsistent 
ways in the last century or so, even if one is only talking about 
continuous functions of one real variable, where "real" is a technical 
term in mathematical analysis. (I have found 5 inequivalent definitions 
of "continuous" in widely-used analysis textbooks, but the proof would 
not be fit for any of these 4 newsgroups.)

Is "real" in analysis and Fortran a good example of overloading? :-)

-- 
John Harper, School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, 
Victoria University, PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand
e-mail john.harper@vuw.ac.nz phone (+64)(4)463 5341 fax (+64)(4)463 5045

Richard wrote:
) My speculation (also just speculation, but I personally think mine more
) plausible - discount as you like) is that either someone originally
) thought it pointless to make a file with no content, or perhaps even
) that the behavior was just an acccident.

If I had to speculate on a real cause, I would say that the programmers
used a zero length to mark some other condition.  An error condition,
maybe.  Or the end of a linked list, or whatever.  Microsoft coders tend
to be bad hacks like that.


SaSW, Willem
-- 
Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for any of the statements
            made in the above text. For all I know I might be
            drugged or something..
            No I'm not paranoid. You all think I'm paranoid, don't you !
#EOT

In article <slrndq13nq.1d24.willem@toad.stack.nl>,
	Willem <willem@stack.nl> writes:
> Richard wrote:
> ) My speculation (also just speculation, but I personally think mine more
> ) plausible - discount as you like) is that either someone originally
> ) thought it pointless to make a file with no content, or perhaps even
> ) that the behavior was just an acccident.
> 
> If I had to speculate on a real cause, I would say that the programmers
> used a zero length to mark some other condition.  An error condition,
> maybe.  Or the end of a linked list, or whatever.  Microsoft coders tend
> to be bad hacks like that.

Or, the code went like this:
       Open Original File
 Loop: Do initial Read -- on EOF exit program (letting the system take care of
                                               closing all open files.)
  Open New File
  Write Record
  Goto Loop

This is the kind of (bad) code I expect considering the source.

bill
  

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
bill@cs.scranton.edu     |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>   

John Harper wrote:

> In article <439FA0C5.7080207@prodigy.net>, CJT  <abujlehc@prodigy.net> wrote:
> 
>>John Harper wrote:
>>
>>
>>>One of the curses of mathematics (and, it seems, computer science) is 
>>>that words can and do get redefined.
>>>
>>
>>Isn't that process called "overloading?"
> 
> 
> Not necessarily. Overloading can be disambiguated by the context (as in 
> a standard-conforming program). An example of what I was complaining 
> about was "continuous", which has been defined in several inconsistent 
> ways in the last century or so, even if one is only talking about 
> continuous functions of one real variable, where "real" is a technical 
> term in mathematical analysis. (I have found 5 inequivalent definitions 
> of "continuous" in widely-used analysis textbooks, but the proof would 
> not be fit for any of these 4 newsgroups.)
> 
> Is "real" in analysis and Fortran a good example of overloading? :-)
> 
I've always been intrigued with the overloading of the word "right."

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On 14 Dec 2005 22:04:06 GMT
bill@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:

> Or, the code went like this:
>        Open Original File
>  Loop: Do initial Read -- on EOF exit program (letting the system take care of
>                                                closing all open files.)
>   Open New File
>   Write Record
>   Goto Loop
> 
> This is the kind of (bad) code I expect considering the source.

	Hmm the "Open New File" had better be for append and not with
truncation - or was that the bug fixed in the first service pack ?

-- 
C:>WIN                                      |   Directable Mirror Arrays
The computer obeys and wins.                | A better way to focus the sun
You lose and Bill collects.                 |    licences available see
                                            |    http://www.sohara.org/

CJT wrote:

> John Harper wrote:
>> One of the curses of mathematics (and, it seems, computer science) is 
>> that words can and do get redefined.
>>
> Isn't that process called "overloading?"
> 

Whatever you call it, it's a problem for Google.  Try "XPL", for 
example, the well-known compiler-writing system from McKeeman, Wortman, 
and Horning, and Wortman.  The forst Google reference is page two, a 
pointer to a Wiki article, and that's incorrect...

[fup-to: comp.programming]

On Thu, 15 Dec 2005, Peter Flass wrote:
> CJT wrote:
>> John Harper wrote:
>>> One of the curses of mathematics (and, it seems, computer science) is 
>>> that words can and do get redefined.
>>> 
>> Isn't that process called "overloading?"

[Gist of someone else's explanation: No, it's not.]

> Whatever you call it, it's a problem for Google.  Try "XPL", for 
> example, the well-known compiler-writing system from McKeeman, Wortman, 
> and Horning, and Wortman.  The forst Google reference is page two, a 
> pointer to a Wiki article, and that's incorrect...

   The first Google hit for "XPL compiler system" (without the quotes)
looks entirely relevant, though. So that's a terrible example.

   The sort of thing John Harper was talking about is like the word "path," 
in a graph-theory context: even Googling "path graph theory" won't help
you, because people actually disagree about /what the word means/. Some 
people say a path can't self-intersect, or can't repeat edges, or some 
other constraint, and some people disagree with them. Contrast this with 
"XPL," which (AFAICT) nobody disagrees about.
   Other variously-defined words in math and CS include "whole number,"
"natural number," "vector," "real number," "tree" (by default, is it 
rooted or not?), and "word" (a machine word or a 16-bit quantity?).

HTH,
-Arthur

Arthur J. O'Dwyer wrote:

> 
> [fup-to: comp.programming]
> 
> On Thu, 15 Dec 2005, Peter Flass wrote:
> 
>> CJT wrote:
>>
>>> John Harper wrote:
>>>
>>>> One of the curses of mathematics (and, it seems, computer science) 
>>>> is that words can and do get redefined.
>>>>
>>> Isn't that process called "overloading?"
> 
> 
> [Gist of someone else's explanation: No, it's not.]
> 
>> Whatever you call it, it's a problem for Google.  Try "XPL", for 
>> example, the well-known compiler-writing system from McKeeman, 
>> Wortman, and Horning, and Wortman.  The forst Google reference is page 
>> two, a pointer to a Wiki article, and that's incorrect...
> 
> 
>   The first Google hit for "XPL compiler system" (without the quotes)
> looks entirely relevant, though. So that's a terrible example.
> 
>   The sort of thing John Harper was talking about is like the word 
> "path," in a graph-theory context: even Googling "path graph theory" 
> won't help
> you, because people actually disagree about /what the word means/. Some 
> people say a path can't self-intersect, or can't repeat edges, or some 
> other constraint, and some people disagree with them. Contrast this with 
> "XPL," which (AFAICT) nobody disagrees about.
>   Other variously-defined words in math and CS include "whole number,"
> "natural number," "vector," "real number," "tree" (by default, is it 
> rooted or not?), and "word" (a machine word or a 16-bit quantity?).
> 
> HTH,
> -Arthur

Better still, "parallel."

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The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam.  Our true address is of the form che...@prodigy.net.

In article <20051212080238.71def0df.steveo@eircom.net>,
Steve O'Hara-Smith  <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
>On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 05:29:42 +0000 (UTC)
>Richard Heathfield <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> The best entries are the ones that result in a rule change. :-)
>> 
>> Incidentally, null files are nothing particularly new - they've been used as 
>> flags many a time.
>
>	Indeed /bin/true on UNIX systems is often an empty file or
>sometimes a file full of comments.

Somebody should tell Richard Stallman that.

--------
dj3vande@perpugilliam:~ (0) $ /bin/true --help
Usage: /bin/true [ignored command line arguments]
  or:  /bin/true OPTION
Exit with a status code indicating success.

These option names may not be abbreviated.

      --help     display this help and exit
      --version  output version information and exit

Report bugs to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org>.
dj3vande@perpugilliam:~ (0) $ /bin/true --version
true (GNU coreutils) 5.2.1
Written by Jim Meyering.

Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
--------
Anybody who really thinks /bin/true should report a version number and
a help string (or even a copyright notice) needs to get his head examined.
  -- Linus Torvalds
--------

See also:
http://ppt.perl.org/commands/true/true.simple
http://ppt.perl.org/commands/true/true.fancy


dave

-- 
Dave Vandervies                 dj3vande@csclub.uwaterloo.ca

When I have to rely on inadequacy, I prefer it to be my own.
                         --Richard Heathfield in comp.lang.c

In article <dnschp$qok$2@rumours.uwaterloo.ca>,
Dave Vandervies <dj3vande@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>In article <20051212080238.71def0df.steveo@eircom.net>,
>>
>>	Indeed /bin/true on UNIX systems is often an empty file or
>>sometimes a file full of comments.
>
>Somebody should tell Richard Stallman that.

You can tell Stallman, but you can't tell him much.
-- 
Am I ranting?  I hope so.  My ranting gets raves.

nothome@spammers.are.scum (Malcolm Dunnett) writes:

> In article <HVmnf.148847$qk4.32926@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>, 
>     "James Giles" <jamesgiles@worldnet.att.net> writes:
> > 
> > But, IBM doesn't *own* the word, nor can they control how
> > it's used in normal discourse.  Words in natural languages mean
> > what the people trying to communicate mutually agree they
> > mean.
> 
>    True. And "way back when" we all agreed that a byte was always
> 8 bits. I don't recall anybody in the 70's ever talking about
> the 12 bit word on a PDP-8 ( or the 16 bit word on a PDP-11 ) being
> a "byte".

In the PDP-10, a 1970s machine, "bytes" were variable-length fields
and instructions called Load Byte and Deposit Byte moved them around.
If bytes were always 8 bits, those instructions would have been called
"bit field moves" or something instead of "bytes".

-- Patrick

In alt.folklore.computers Dave Vandervies <dj3vande@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
:In article <20051212080238.71def0df.steveo@eircom.net>,
:Steve O'Hara-Smith  <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
:>On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 05:29:42 +0000 (UTC)
:>Richard Heathfield <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
:>
:>> The best entries are the ones that result in a rule change. :-)
:>> 
:>> Incidentally, null files are nothing particularly new - they've been used as 
:>> flags many a time.
:>
:>       Indeed /bin/true on UNIX systems is often an empty file or
:>sometimes a file full of comments.

:Somebody should tell Richard Stallman that.

GNU's false may not be posix compliant.  At least these days, it doesn't
ever return true!  It used to!  And took a huge fight to get that
fixed.  It still produces output, which is aruguably broken.

On Thu, 15 Dec 2005 18:27:05 +0000 (UTC)
dj3vande@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Dave Vandervies) wrote:

> In article <20051212080238.71def0df.steveo@eircom.net>,
> Steve O'Hara-Smith  <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

> >	Indeed /bin/true on UNIX systems is often an empty file or
> >sometimes a file full of comments.
> 
> Somebody should tell Richard Stallman that.

	Why ? After all Gnu's Not Unix.

> --------
> Anybody who really thinks /bin/true should report a version number and
> a help string (or even a copyright notice) needs to get his head examined.
>   -- Linus Torvalds
> --------

	I find myself in agreement with Linus on this - although I did
rather like the spoof man page for a late version of true that included
running rogue among the options.

-- 
C:>WIN                                      |   Directable Mirror Arrays
The computer obeys and wins.                | A better way to focus the sun
You lose and Bill collects.                 |    licences available see
                                            |    http://www.sohara.org/

On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 20:10:44 GMT, "Michael Metcalf"
<michaelmetcalf@compuserve.com> wrote:


>Not true. Hz is an SI unit as defined by the International Union for Weights 
>and Measures (approximate name) in Paris. ISO is in Geneva. And Hz is 
>clearly more approriate, in the digital age, than something called cycles 
>(with its implication of circles, rotation etc.).

Ahhh - so I've been griping about the wrong standards commitee all
these years.  Apologies to ISO - on this matter, at least.

The problem I've always had with Hz is that it's an extra
nomenclature, replacing cycles per second which states a familiar
unit: 1/second.  I've seen people make 2 pi errors because the actual
unit wasn't in their face.

Cycles don't have to be circles or rotation.  Just something periodic.

Ken Plotkin

Ken Plotkin wrote:

>The problem I've always had with Hz is that it's an extra
>nomenclature, replacing cycles per second which states a familiar
>unit: 1/second.  I've seen people make 2 pi errors because the actual
>unit wasn't in their face.
>  
>

Huh ? That 2 pi factor must be a different confusion, perhaps with 
angular frequency. 1 Hz = 1 s−1 = 1 cycle per second.

On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 01:17:07 GMT, John Doe <jdoe@company.com> wrote:

>Huh ? That 2 pi factor must be a different confusion, perhaps with 
>angular frequency. 1 Hz = 1 s?1 = 1 cycle per second.

That was exactly the problem.  With the notation cycles per second,
the physical unit is in your face.  With Hz, it's not.  Someone in one
of our other facilities was calculating a spectrum, and he had written
cos (omega), not cos (2 pi f).

He was young enough to have grown up with Hz, and the disconnect from
the physical unit led to his error.

In high school physics they make a big thing of carrying the units
along when you do a calculation.  IMHO, that's a very good thing.  But
the change from cps to Hz put 1/second one step away.

I'm not saying that things like denoting N/m**2 as Pa are bad, because
they provide a useful shorthand.  But something that replaces a single
unit with a different name for the same unit just adds a layer.

BTW - an entertaining thing to do is to plot a graph of cps vs Hz on
semi-log paper.  Then see who laughs and who just looks confused.

Ken Plotkin

Ken Plotkin wrote

>
>That was exactly the problem.  With the notation cycles per second,
>the physical unit is in your face.  With Hz, it's not. 
>

I guess I see what you mean. Maybe we should also gripe about newtons, 
joules, teslas, farads, volts, amps, ohms, etc. ;-)

["Followup-To:" header set to alt.folklore.computers.]
>
> 	And yet the last time I looked at it on a Sun box it was
> version 1.5 - I just hope the commit messages don't say "Bug fix".

I don't know if I should laugh or cry... /bin/true here on my Debian box
says:

true (GNU coreutils) 5.93
Copyright (C) 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software.  You may redistribute copies of it under the
terms of
the GNU General Public License <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Jim Meyering.

Why in the name of all that is holy would true need a version number,
a copyright notice, and a disclaimer of warranty.

/me prods his sigmonster...

-- 
"Anybody who really thinks /bin/true should report a version number and
 a help string (or even a copyright notice) needs to get his head examined."
	 -- Linus Torvalds

On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 14:11:23 GMT, John Doe <jdoe@company.com> wrote:


>I guess I see what you mean. Maybe we should also gripe about newtons, 
>joules, teslas, farads, volts, amps, ohms, etc. ;-)

We could, but those are abbreviations for more complex combinations of
units, and are useful beyond honoring their namesakes.

Ken Plotkin

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 09:21:19 +0100, Jan Vorbr�ggen
<jvorbrueggen-not@mediasec.de> wrote:

> > To be sure, 8-bit bytes have probably always been the most
> > common.  That's always been what IBM used, and they

That's what IBM used starting with S/360. (And others who cloned or
quasi-cloned S/360, in those days called 'plug compatible
manufacturers'.) Earlier IBM 'scientific' machines used several
different word sizes that mostly allowed 6-bit bytes, and earlier
'data processing' machines mostly had 6-bit memory units. S/360 et seq
and its software for many years still supported 7-track tape drives (6
bits plus parity) for interchange with those older systems.

> > dominate(d) the market.  I don't recall any Digital Equipment
> > Corp machine that didn't have 8-bit bytes either, and they
> > were second only to IBM for many years.
> 
> DEC's 36-bit machines could use any "byte" length - the requisite
> instructions have a field for the byte width, with the position field
> (within a word) being automatically incremented by this amount. Byte
> widths in wide use were 5, 6, and 7 bits, with 8 bits only being used
> for interoperability with that other company's equipment.
> 
PDP-10 and -6 as noted elsethread*.  PDP-7 and -9, and I think -1 and
-4, were 18-bit word with 6 or 9-bit bytes reasonably common; -8 and I
think -5 and -12 were 12-bit word with 6-bit bytes usual, and directly
supported on later models by the SWAp Bytes instruction. Only PDP-11
and VAX and Alpha (nominally its successors) were 8-bit byte and cell
-- although I'm pretty sure these machines together were the most
widely used of DEC machines.

* On recently checking Eric Raymond's online version of the jargon
file, I find that LDB DPB etc. are officially no longer considered (at
least by him) hacker jargon. AAAAAAARRRRRGHHHH!

- David.Thompson1 at worldnet.att.net

Dave Thompson wrote:
(snip)

> That's what IBM used starting with S/360. (And others who cloned or
> quasi-cloned S/360, in those days called 'plug compatible
> manufacturers'.) Earlier IBM 'scientific' machines used several
> different word sizes that mostly allowed 6-bit bytes, and earlier
> 'data processing' machines mostly had 6-bit memory units. S/360 et seq
> and its software for many years still supported 7-track tape drives (6
> bits plus parity) for interchange with those older systems.

But they didn't call them bytes until S/360.  704 Fortran calls
them BCD or BCD characters, the code is BCDIC.

(snip)

> PDP-10 and -6 as noted elsethread*.  PDP-7 and -9, and I think -1 and
> -4, were 18-bit word with 6 or 9-bit bytes reasonably common; -8 and I
> think -5 and -12 were 12-bit word with 6-bit bytes usual, and directly
> supported on later models by the SWAp Bytes instruction. 

DEC had many different character codes and sizes.  TOPS-10 uses 7 bit
ASCII and sixbit in 36 bit words.  PDP-11 OSs use both ASCII in 8 bits
and RAD50 storing three characters in a 16 bit word.  Probably more,
but those were some of the common ones for those machines.

-- glen

glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
> Dave Thompson wrote:
> (snip)
> 
>> That's what IBM used starting with S/360. (And others who cloned or
>> quasi-cloned S/360, in those days called 'plug compatible
>> manufacturers'.) Earlier IBM 'scientific' machines used several
>> different word sizes that mostly allowed 6-bit bytes, and earlier
>> 'data processing' machines mostly had 6-bit memory units. S/360 et seq
>> and its software for many years still supported 7-track tape drives (6
>> bits plus parity) for interchange with those older systems.
> 
> 
> But they didn't call them bytes until S/360.  704 Fortran calls
> them BCD or BCD characters, the code is BCDIC.
> 
> (snip)
> 
>> PDP-10 and -6 as noted elsethread*.  PDP-7 and -9, and I think -1 and
>> -4, were 18-bit word with 6 or 9-bit bytes reasonably common; -8 and I
>> think -5 and -12 were 12-bit word with 6-bit bytes usual, and directly
>> supported on later models by the SWAp Bytes instruction. 
> 
> 
> DEC had many different character codes and sizes.  TOPS-10 uses 7 bit
> ASCII and sixbit in 36 bit words.  PDP-11 OSs use both ASCII in 8 bits
> and RAD50 storing three characters in a 16 bit word.  Probably more,
> but those were some of the common ones for those machines.
> 
> -- glen
> 

And the Univac 1100-series mainframes I started out on had 6-bit 
Fieldata characters and 9-bit "ASCII" (leftmost bit was ignored) in a 
36-bit word.  Nice machines.

Jim