10-Oct-2008

Warning: dodgy example

In the documentation for LIB$WAIT, there is an example written in COBOL followed by an extremely misleading comment.

The comment says that the example "demonstrates the use of LIB$WAIT on both OpenVMS VAX and OpenVMS Alpha and I64 systems. When run, the process performs a 10 second wait".

Aside from the bizarre syntax of that sentence (both VAX and Alpha and I64???), yes it does. If you compile it with the correct /FLOAT qualifier on IA64. If you don't, the program does not wait at all. And because the code does not retrieve or check return status, you never know you just incurred a LIB$_INVARG error.

This issue has been reported to HP.

Posted at October 10, 2008 10:13 AM
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