Re: Peculiar number formatting?

Back when I first started, we had a brand new IBM 360/25 to replace old Tabulator gear in the shop. I remember seeing the guys doing patch-panel programming on those things. And I think that was the era that invented the security measure of printing fill characters in dollar amount fields printed on pre-printed check forms. Payroll and Accounts Payable.

I was going to college and had a full time job in the data processing dept of a big chemical company. They would let me have several hours during the day to go attend classes. I was hired on as a “Computer Operator” at $1.50 / hour. Took me a year to become one with the machine.

I think coffee was 5 cents at the time.

> On May 19, 2026, at 03:44, Tim Bradshaw (as tfb at cley dot com) <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> On 19 May 2026, at 11:09, David McClain (as dbm at refined-audiometrics dot com) <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>> I wonder what the Lisp world was thinking when they decided to standardize on this kind of format output?? COBOL era?
> 
> Probably 'what maclisp did' and maclisp was old.  My guess would therefore be 'what early FORTRAN did', which probably means 77 or even 66.
> 
> It's an antique now, for sure.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Lisp Hug - the mailing list for LispWorks users
> [email protected]
> http://www.lispworks.com/support/lisp-hug.html


_______________________________________________
Lisp Hug - the mailing list for LispWorks users
[email protected]
http://www.lispworks.com/support/lisp-hug.html