6.0021 Rs: Strings; French-English; Steward (4/82)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Mon, 18 May 1992 19:58:58 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 6, No. 0021. Monday, 18 May 1992.


(1) Date: Mon, 18 May 1992 09:57 EDT (31 lines)
From: "Mary Dee Harris, Language Technology"
<MDHARRIS@guvax.georgetown.edu>
Subject: Strings in PL/I

(2) Date: Mon, 18 May 1992 13:45 EST (13 lines)
From: STOLARZ@DEPAUW.BITNET

(3) Date: Mon, 18 May 1992 10:08 EDT (18 lines)
From: "NAME MICHEL (MGRIMAUD@LUCY.WELLESLEY.EDU) GRIMAUD"
Subject: French-English MS-DOS dictionary

(4) Date: Wed, 13 May 1992 23:22:49 -0400 (20 lines)
From: warkent@epas.utoronto.ca (Germaine Warkentin)
Subject: Steward

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 18 May 1992 09:57 EDT
From: "Mary Dee Harris, Language Technology" <MDHARRIS@guvax.georgetown.edu>
Subject: Strings in PL/I

Leslie Morgan mentioned PL/I as the first high-level language in which
strings appeared as a data type and wondered how they came to be part
of PL/I. I can't say with accuracy, but I was around at the time and
working as a programmer for IBM. I wrote programs in assembly
language on the IBM7094 and 7040 and 7044 series computers. One of
the main differences between the 7090/94 and the 7040/44 was that the
latter had character processing as part of the architecture. The
7090/94 was a word-oriented machine intended mostly for mathematical
problems, and the 7040/44s were attached at the front-end as
input/output processors. (Here read 'word' to mean a computer word,
which was primarily regarded as a signed or unsigned integer or a
floating point number. A word on the 7090/94 was 36 bit which could
under some circumstances be viewed as 6 6-bit characters. [The term '
byte' did not come on the scene until the development of the System
360, which combined the word and character oriented modes.]) The 7040/44s
could address an individual character as well as a word without a lot
of bit shifting, so they were better for text-oriented processing.

The System/360 was designed to be a 'well-rounded' machine,
hence the name, and PL/I was the high-level language designed for it.
It was not only suited for math and text applications but also for
systems programming, in much the same sense that C is the choice now.
The history of PL/I itself is long and involved (and interesting), but
that's enough for now.

Mary Dee Harris (considering herself an 'old timer' today since I
could answer this question from personal experience)
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------22----
Date: Mon, 18 May 1992 13:45 EST
From: STOLARZ@DEPAUW.BITNET

In regard to the origin of the term "string" in computing: Jean
Sammet in _Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals_ says that the
first string manipulation language was COMIT, the details of whivh were first
published in 1960. From what she says, it is uncertain that within the
context of the language strings were called "strings". Certainly, by
1962, with the development of SNOBOL (the SN comes from StriNg), the term
is documentable.

Louis Smogor
STOLARZ@DEPAUW.BITNET
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------28----
Date: Mon, 18 May 1992 10:08 EDT
From: "NAME MICHEL (MGRIMAUD@LUCY.WELLESLEY.EDU) GRIMAUD"
Subject: French-English MS-DOS dictionary

French-English and English-French Dictionaries:

The COLLINS On-Line dictionary from HarperCollins is the only one I know...
It isn't bad but it isn't that good and it is not particularly easy to use
from one's word processor.

I'm afraid I would recommend waiting for a new version or for a better
product.

Michel Grimaud
French Dept
Wellesley College


(4) --------------------------------------------------------------32----
Date: Wed, 13 May 1992 23:22:49 -0400
From: warkent@epas.utoronto.ca (Germaine Warkentin)
Subject: Steward

I agree with Kevin Berland. I was utterly astonished at the
definition of "steward" given by the person who originally posted the
query. I teach at a college with a Methodist tradition going back to
1836. The word stewardship is used constantly by members of the
college and the community which shares in its work (the United Church
of Canada) to indicate that those who hold positions of responsibility
do so "in trust," as it were. When they act, they act _on behalf_ of
others and they can be called to render account at any moment.
"Dominion" is simply not in it! I'll be watching further responses
with interest. Germaine.

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Germaine Warkentin warkent@epas.utoronto.ca
English, Victoria College, University of Toronto
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