CNBC and the rest of the media talking heads on the Y2K Sept 9,1999 nonsense.
First the 9999 stop code was used by Cobol batch programs to indicate end of the input data. This was prior to the compiler supporting the End of File condition with the AT END instruction. The AT END instruction has been part of the language for over 30 years, so this condition would likely only affect programs which are more than 30 years old.
Those programs would be batch, not interactive, online or realtime. They would work with 'batches' of data and generally processed overnight. If they failed due to a Y2K bug, the failure would be a premature end of program leaving data unprocessed.
The earliest that someone might notice the incorrect output would be today. Not all day yesterday when the talking heads were announcing the fizzle. More likely, if there were any failures and I don't believe there were many, during the next few months, some accountant might note that some items weren't billed, or some orders weren't processed or some services weren't provisioned, or there was a series of customer complaints about some product /service not being received.
But most likely, any failures directly caused by 9999 would just go totally unnoticed. Happened once, will never happen again. Who cares?
Ian. |
