creat 1202

On 25 Jan 2005 15:19:11 GMT in alt.folklore.computers,

Then try decoding Minsky's Turing machine simulator for education.

As Barb pointed out elsewhere, TECO is great for editing streams of text, and supported matching predefined and user specified sets of characters before regular expression editors were available. Having different editors in one's metal and software toolbox can be useful for different types of editing jobs.

I once bailed out a complex mailout job which was to be done on PC DOS Paradox over IBM TR LAN to HP LaserJet, when they figured out they'd miss their mailing deadline for a major email system switchover and rollout, because the application plus printer were just too slow at the speed it was going to get all of any one item printed before the deadline. (Think the problem was that Paradox was effectively sending each page as a separate spool job, and the turnaround time was excessive; and they obviously hadn't tested the speed of the process after loading *all* the data, IIRC they did their speed test after loading only a few dozen records.) Objective was to (internal) snail mail out new system access, login, and migration information and procedures, including labels and customized letters with names, addresses, userids, and pbuttwords, to about 1600 users. They dumped the Paradox data to a tab delimited flat file, and I used FTP, and the editors, scripting languages, and tools on VM (XEDIT: column editing), VMS (TECO: stream editing), and Unix (sed: line editing; awk: customized documents) to extract data and generate the different files of documents, then shipped them all over to an MVS system to be printed on high speed laser and lineprinters. Had the operators carefully matching names to stick on labels and stuff envelopes before the (now backup) PC application had progressed very much further.

Score: PC zilch, BIG OLD IRON won!

-- Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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