On Wed, 28 Nov 2012 15:39:56 -0500, John Gilmore <jwgli...@gmail.com> wrote:
>I must, however, add that "unpredictable" is sometimes in some IBM >publications used as a polite euphemism for "It's too complicated to >explain here, and you wouldn't understand anyway". In my 30 years of creating, documenting, and using IBM APIs, I have never seen such usage. For a particular implementation, results are determinate and predictable to the engineers of the implementation. But between two different implementations, the results may be different. Consequently, the programmer may *observe* a particular behavior, but they should not attempt to *predict* any particular behavior, as the engineers are not obligated to maintain any particular result. The POO says [p.1-29] that compatibility is maintained (defined as 'identical results') as long as the program, among other things, "does not depend on results or functions that are defined to be unpredictable or model-dependent or are identified as undefined. This includes the requirement that the program should not depend on the assignment of device numbers and CPU addresses." Alan Altmark IBM ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
