Re: Y21C Bug

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <85201l$7q3@ftp.kvaerner.com>, "Tarjei T. Jensen" <tarjei.jensen@kvaerner.com> writes:
> 
> Robert Dewar wrote
>>I can just imagine someone saying in 1985 (easy to imagine,
>>because it is based on memories of hearing this said often)
>>
>>"I expect support for COBOL-74 and related applications to be
>> phased out by the end of the decade, and we should not have
>> any trouble with the date change in 2000 because all old
>> applications will be phased out by then, and all new
>> applications are being written to be aware of this problem"
> 
> That is an entirely different matter. There are other dynamics involved. E.g.
> incompatibilities between operating system versions. Programs cannot determine
> disk sizes in bytes because a 32 bit int is becoming too small. Some files are
> becoming so large that one needs more than 32 bit ints to store the size. I'm
> sure others can point to other such 32bit annoyances.

Individual programs only get replaced out of need, and the set of
programs that need to calculate the size of an entire disk is quite
small.  Several years ago my finances became so complex that my
Quicken file will no longer fit on a 1 MB floppy, but I have no
chance for reaching the state where my finances half fill the
9 GB hard drive on the Macintosh.

There is also not necessarily any correlation between disk size and
word size.  Since 1979 the 32-bit RMS API for VMS (but not the underlying
hardware at the start) has been able to handle file sizes up to 2000
gigabytes.  Certainly there are programs for which that limit is too small,
but they are decidedly a minority.

Larry Kilgallen