Function Pointers

[Richard Heathfield]

Kenneth Brody said:

I forget if it was here or elsewhere, but I saw someone point out
(related to the recent "6/6/6" date) that "vi vi vi" is "the editor
of the beast".

Um, 6/6/6 was over two thousand years ago. Recent in geological terms, I'll
grant you.

 

[Walter Roberson]

I can't justify dd, other than to say that it's a very powerful tool,

dd == "data duplicator" according to some sources. The syntax might
have been modeled on IBM's JCL "DD" statement.

 

[Joe Wright]

Kenneth Brody said:



Um, 6/6/6 was over two thousand years ago. Recent in geological terms, I'll
grant you.

No smiley? It was 24 days ago. :=)

 

[Walter Roberson]

Um, 6/6/6 was over two thousand years ago. Recent in geological terms, I'll
grant you.

Two thousand years ago, that notation wouldn't have been
used for dates. If you are going to interpret as a date, you need
to use present-day interpretation of what it means, and in present-day
interpretation, there is no real standard that would require that
it be interpreted as anything other than sometime this century.

Now, if ISO date notation had been used...

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Joe Wright said:

No smiley? It was 24 days ago. :=)

No, it wasn't. 24 days ago, it was 6/6/2006, which is a very different date
indeed.

MY programs did NOT need Y2K mods, and will not need Y2.1K mods either.

 

[Keith Thompson]

Two thousand years ago, that notation wouldn't have been
used for dates. If you are going to interpret as a date, you need
to use present-day interpretation of what it means, and in present-day
interpretation, there is no real standard that would require that
it be interpreted as anything other than sometime this century.

Sure there is. The order is ambiguous, but it's natural to interpret
the fields of 6/6/6 as the year, month, and date. The year 6 was 2000
years ago (even though it wasn't called that at the time).

There are also common notations in which 6/6/6 would mean June 6, 2006
(or June 6, 1906) -- but 06 is a more likely representation for the
year than just 6. The lack of a leading 0 on the year "6" makes it
more likely that it refers to the year 6 rather than 2006 (or 1996).

Now, if ISO date notation had been used...

then it would have been even more obvious -- but ISO 8601 does allow
(but not encourage) the year to be represented by its last two digits.