L&A Johnson said:

>Chuck Mathis wrote:
>
>> Another media hype -- September 9, 1999 in every language I've studied is
>> 090999 not 9999.<snip>
>
>Chuck, you are correct if the field was six alpha bytes "090999" but in
>the 70's
>when space was tight, the field would most likely would have been four hex
>bytes
>#9999. In the '70s we wrote mostly in macro assembler because space was
>precious
>and COLOL, PL/1 and FORTRAN where hogs. I am afraid that assembler languages
>probably predate your studies.
>
>Larry

<GEEK>

But in hex-world, to denote a field as invalid, most people would have
used FF FF FF FF - your four hex bytes would read 09 09 09 09 which looks
a little wierd. The 'FF' blank date wouldn't cause a problem for a *long*
time. Unless you're using 4-bit nibbles for part of the date, in which
case there isn't enough room for the 'day' field.

</GEEK>

OBVanagon - saw loads of vanagons at Burning Man last week. A sighting
of Otmar's Stretch was reported & I missed meeting Chris Paquette at
the Bus Camp by about an hour. Our '88 van spent over an hour idling
in the desert on the way home & didn't boil over, much to our amazement.
Photos in a few days .....

Pete C

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Sr. Test Dev. Engineer             (916) 394-5302 - phone
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