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From: Stefan Jon Silverman <sjs@sjsinc.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin,comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc
Subject: Re: You can tune a file system, but you can't tune a fish
Date: 10 Sep 1995 09:23:52 GMT
Organization: SJS Associates, N.A., Inc.
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Message-ID: <42uar8$f29@kadath.zeitgeist.net>
References: <405hjb$llr@news.jhu.edu> <DDr2ty.E95@seas.ucla.edu> <1995Aug24.042123.3589@nb.rockwell.com> <41ifrb$16g@hammer.msfc.nasa.gov> <42qjqf$28q@news.parc.xerox.com>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.sys.sun.admin:52380 comp.unix.solaris:45552 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:810
Anybody remember the Steve Johnson (I worked for him at one point and always
liked the "yaccman" vanity license plate) comments in "pcc" (not the Oracle
thing, but the first "portable 'c' compiler") that said, to paraphrase,
"beyond this point dragons lurk" in the parser where he attempted
to make the "great unwashed" understand that "magic happens" and if you modify
the code "bad things happen"......from my understanding of the story, this
happened around 4 A.M. when he got the code to work on something besides a
Honywell and went parading aroung the halls of Bell Labs saying "it works"
and never understood why...even 15 years later when we at nCube got the latest
SV5R4 code, the comments were still there and the code had not changed....
I also, failing memory becoming apparent, would love somebody to remind me
of the 2 line code example that proves a compiler is based on the original
K&R compiler (ala' an error messsage that says "illegal GECOS BCD constant"). I
knew it once and have lost it....
--
Regards,
b c++'ing u,
%-) sjs
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Stefan Jon Silverman - President SJS Associates, N.A., Inc.
572 Chestnut Street
Distributed Systems Architecture & Implementation San Francisco, Ca. 94133
Phone: 415 989 2741
Fax: 415 989 7250
E-mail: sjs@sjsinc.com Cell: 415 519 3494
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Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down!!!
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