Re: Alter and move corresponding: was The tragedy of SQL

On 16/09/21 05:47, Michael Nolan wrote:
> When I was working at the help desk at the computer center as an 
> undergrad, the professor in charge of that group used to give us 
> interesting little language tests for things we needed to watch out 
> for, especially with beginning programmers.
>
> One of his favorite ploys was to use the EQUIVALENCE function in 
> FORTRAN to equivalence a constant with a variable, then assign 
> something to that variable.  In one of the FORTRAN compilers, that 
> would result in overwriting the constant, so all future uses of it 
> would have the new value.  This would break many things, of course.
> --
> Mike Nolan
>
>
On the IBM 1130 we were warned not to assign a value to a number, like

     3 = 7

if we did then apparently

     x = 6 * 3

would assign the value of 42 to x.

Never tried it, I now wish I had!


Cheers,
Gavin