Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mit-eddie.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!barmar From: barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin) Newsgroups: net.lang Subject: Re: Misleading COBOL semantics Message-ID: <3223@mit-eddie.UUCP> Date: Fri, 30-Nov-84 02:33:16 EST Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.3223 Posted: Fri Nov 30 02:33:16 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 1-Dec-84 06:47:42 EST References: <6769@watdaisy.UUCP> Reply-To: barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin) Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA Lines: 23 In article <6769@watdaisy.UUCP> gvcormack@watdaisy.UUCP (Gordon V. Cormack) writes: >The statement > > MULTIPLY A BY B > >stores the result in B, not A as is implied. I was reading the transcript of a talk by Grace Hopper on the early history and development of COBOL, and she mentioned that they wanted the DIVIDE statement to be DIVIDE dividend BY divisor because it is what people normally say, but they made it DIVIDE divisor INTO dividend so that they could maintain the consistency of the result always being the second value. She didn't mention the MULTIPLY verb, but it looks like in this case there wasn't a form of the English sentence that fit. So, they obviously decided to abandon consistency with English in order to maintain internal consistency in the language. In other words, a trade-off was necessary, and they chose the less intuitive one. -- Barry Margolin ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar