Talk:IEFBR14
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There is apocryphal information regarding an initial bug in this program. I am new and don't no how you would attribute this. The bug was in the first statement. It wasn't there and depending on the current contents of register fifteen (R15) the program would fail. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Spaceyankee (talk • contribs) 13:23, 8 September 2005.
This page (http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/tech/oreilly/more-iefbr14.html) features an email from the alledged author of IEFBR14, David Bagwell, who refutes the reports of the 'uncleared registers' bug.
To say "IBM forgot to set the return register ... in the past", and "later added [the fix]" is not quite accurate. I beleive the first release of IEFBR14 that I saw in OS/360 was fully functional in this regard. Another commentary on IEFBR14 I saw some time ago stated that "upon initial release there were two bugs in the program: the return code was not set to 0, and it was not linked as `load and keep resident'." Actually, the return code problem was detected on the first compile and fixed on the second, long before release. Some months later, when "load and keep resident" functionality was added to the system, IEFBR14 was not in the first cut of programs so linked, but was added later. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.97.50.115 (talk • contribs) 23:39, 9 October 2005.
- See John Pershing's note, added to the article by 62.93.174.79 on 26 November 2005. Pershing is (or by now, probably "was") a well respected IBM researcher and was around in the early days of OS/360. If he confirms the story, I'd recommend you believe it. This can be easily verified if we can find someone who has a copy of the OS/360 microfiche. Yes, even in the 1960s, you got the source code of your operating system! RossPatterson 20:58, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
- In a classic example of irony, it seems you can't even discuss the null program without encountering problems! Today's update by 72.1.218.129 fixes an error in John Pershing's source code. I couldn't believe it (although the fix is clearly correct), so I checked the original email and its wrong there. In the process, I added the RISKS note as a reference. Caveat programmator, eh? RossPatterson 03:31, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
