Lit. Buffer overruns 1687

I'd want my compiler to catch grammar and spelling mistakes that would cause a source not to be compileable, certainly. Not sure I want it commenting on artistic merit.

Heck, if it was a teaching compiler, I'd probably even let it run through no matter what crap was used as input (bear in mind that I was taught to program without a computer in sight; coach'd simply look at the flowcharts or coding sheets and go "nope" and hand it back for revision).

Pretty specific case; I'd not be writing a program so much as a test-set for another program.

Honeywell COBOL (version unknown) Declaratives Section.

(file doesn't exist) "Hi, welcome to the Declaratives Section. An I-O Error has occurred; what would you like to do?"

"Close all files please"

"Certainly..."

(but the file doesn't exist, so....) "Hi, welcome to the Declaratives Section..." ...

IIRC, the workaround was as much or more trouble than custom coding a separate Error-Handler Section.

Your talking about breaking a compiler... but I *want* the compiler to work, else no 'raison d'etre' for yours truly.

And any compiler operating parameters should be well documented, ie: you wouldn't want to nest statements over 255 levels deep so a compiler might not even bother counting past that (or the counter might roll over), but at least it says so right in the documentation.

And *that's* what I like about working on Big Iron. The stuff does what it says it does and what it doesn't do it *says* it doesn't do so you can have contingency plans if you're operating outside scope.

The Y2K "bug" isn't a bug until you actually have to compare 2 digit years of records written in different centuries. A large portion of newsreaders are non-archival so there'd be no need for a 4 digit year for the "typical user".

How's that working out? I've gone through several different newsreaders in the past couple years; currently this one's the "least evil" IMHO.

OE - default html and optional stationery Agent - Trial version of a proggie I'll never purchase (havent tried it) T-Bird - sloooow if dealing with more than a couple K headers at a time

rpl