From rinehuls@Radix.Net Mon Sep 13 22:59:49 1999 Received: from mail1.radix.net (mail1.radix.net [207.192.128.31]) by dkuug.dk (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id WAA21889; Mon, 13 Sep 1999 22:59:48 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from rinehuls@Radix.Net) Received: from saltmine.radix.net (saltmine.radix.net [207.192.128.40]) by mail1.radix.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id RAA08189; Mon, 13 Sep 1999 17:00:35 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1999 17:00:33 -0400 (EDT) From: William Rinehuls Reply-To: William Rinehuls To: sc22info@dkuug.dk cc: keld simonsen Subject: SC22 N2995 - PL/I Project Editor Report - PLENARY AGENDA ITEM Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII __________________ beginning of title page __________________________ ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces Secretariat: U.S.A. (ANSI) ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 N2995 TITLE: PL/I Project Editor Report for the September 1999 JTC 1/SC22 Plenary - PLENARY AGENDA ITEM DATE ASSIGNED: 1999-09-13 SOURCE: Secretariat, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 BACKWARD POINTER: N/A DOCUMENT TYPE: Project Editor Report PROJECT NUMBER: JTC 1.22.05, JTC 1.22.06 STATUS: Discussion of this document will be an agenda item for the September 1999 JTC 1/SC22 Plenary. ACTION IDENTIFIER: FYI DUE DATE: N/A DISTRIBUTION: Text CROSS REFERENCE: N/A DISTRIBUTION FORM: Def Address reply to: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Secretariat William C. Rinehuls 8457 Rushing Creek Court Springfield, VA 22153 USA Telephone: +1 (703) 912-9680 Fax: +1 (703) 912-2973 email: rinehuls@radix.net _____________ end of title page; beginning of report ___________________ PL/I PROJECT EDITOR REPORT FOR THE SEPTEMBER 1999 JTC 1/SC22 PLENARY Project 97.22.5: Revision of ISO 6160 "Programming Language PL/I" Existing standard. No activities or requests for additions or clarifications during the last year. ANSI reaffirmed the underlying document, ANS X3.53-1976 (previously reaffirmed 1993 and earlier), during the reporting year for an additional five years. ISO 6160 is now scheduled for review, and we recommend that it should be reaffirmed: the Standard is stable and has reference value for existing implementations and users. However, as noted below, the DATE function provided in this Standard must be used with care during and after the century transition. Project 97.22.6: ISO 6522 "General Purpose PL/I" No requests for clarifications or extensions in the last year. During the reporting year, ANSI reaffirmed the parallel and textually identical national document, ANS X3.74-1987, previously reaffirmed 1993, for an additional five years. The reasons for this exactly parallel the recommendation made to SC22 in 1996: the language it defines is still in active use in many locations and that the availability of the Standard continues to be of use in procurements and in assessing conformance and interoperability. Other Issues While the internal format for storing dates is strictly implementation dependent and most known implementations do not have formats that would interact with Y2K issues, IS 6160 provides a "DATE" function that returns a two-digit year, with all the vunerabilities that implies. A replacement DATETIME function was introduced into IS 6522 for the explicit purpose of providing a mechanism that would not be Y2K-sensitive (see Annex B), but no action was ever taken to explicitly deprecate DATE. If there is a choice for any new development, IS 6522 continues to represent better practice than IS 6160 for this and other reasons. Otherwise, there are no significant outstanding issues affecting the PL/I standards. We remain interested in the future of other standards defined using formal or semi-formal methods, as we have concluded that these are not consistent with easy or rapid revisions or updates. ________________________ end of SC22 N2995 ___________________________