From furcyd at uwosh.edu  Fri Sep  8 11:26:35 2006
From: furcyd at uwosh.edu (David Furcy)
Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2006 13:26:35 -0500
Subject: [ch] early FORTRAN compiler anecdote
Message-ID: <f547966d3e2d.45016f8b@uwosh.edu>

I recently joined this list and have not seen any traffic yet... I'll try this anyway.
Someone mentioned to me the other day a story about how an early FORTRAN compiler was used to compile a program that was executed on a space probe with dire consequences due to ambiguities at the lexer level in a "do loop" (the anecdote went like this: "you see, back then white space was not used as a token separator, etc.) Obviously, I am short on details here. Can anybody help me fill them in with some good references? thanks in advance,

David

--
Dr. David Furcy, Assistant Professor
Computer Science Department               
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
furcyd at uwosh.edu
http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/furcyd
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From perry at piermont.com  Fri Sep  8 11:46:16 2006
From: perry at piermont.com (Perry E. Metzger)
Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2006 14:46:16 -0400
Subject: [ch] early FORTRAN compiler anecdote
In-Reply-To: <f547966d3e2d.45016f8b@uwosh.edu> (David Furcy's message of
	"Fri, 08 Sep 2006 13:26:35 -0500")
References: <f547966d3e2d.45016f8b@uwosh.edu>
Message-ID: <87lkoufb7r.fsf@snark.piermont.com>


David Furcy <furcyd at uwosh.edu> writes:
> I recently joined this list and have not seen any traffic
> yet... I'll try this anyway.
> Someone mentioned to me the other day a story about how an early
> FORTRAN compiler was used to compile a program that was executed on
> a space probe with dire consequences due to ambiguities at the lexer
> level in a "do loop" (the anecdote went like this: "you see, back
> then white space was not used as a token separator, etc.) Obviously,
> I am short on details here. Can anybody help me fill them in with
> some good references? thanks in advance,

The archives of the RISKS mailing list are always a good place to look
for such lore.

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/9.54.html#subj1

.pm