Date:         Fri, 1 Apr 2005 13:44:39 -0500
Reply-To:     Jim Groeneveld <jim1stat@YAHOO.CO.UK>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Jim Groeneveld <jim1stat@YAHOO.CO.UK>
Subject:      Re: UPPER and lower case SAS code processing times difference
Comments: To: Charles Harbour <charles.harbour@PEARSON.COM>

Thanks Charles,

Yes, I remember such an article from about 30 years ago too. Not the same
as this one. I must have it on paper somewhere around yet. I remember the
statement, which is not in your reference:
"Real FORTRAN Programmers always PEEK and POKE outside boudaries."
And FORTRAN did (does?) not check for that, and that opened doors to really
nice things.

And I also remember an extensive, pseudo serious and hilarious article
about the complementary statement to GOTO: the COMEFROM statement. Would
someone have that aroud? I don't have it.

Regards - Jim ;-)
--
Y. (Jim) Groeneveld, MSc., Biostatistician, Vitatron b.v., NL
Jim.Groeneveld_AT_Vitatron.com (replace _AT_ by AT sign)
http://www.vitatron.com, http://home.hccnet.nl/jim.groeneveld

[common disclaimer]


On Fri, 1 Apr 2005 10:59:54 -0500, Charles Harbour
<charles.harbour@PEARSON.COM> wrote:

>THIS IS BUT ONE EXAMPLE AS TO WHY ALL REAL PROGRAMMERS ONLY CODE IN
>UPPERCASE.
>
>http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html  (REAL PROGRAMMERS DON'T
>KNOW HOW TO PASTE HTML PROPERLY, EITHER)
>
>HAPPY DAY!
>
>CH
>
>
>On Fri, 1 Apr 2005 01:56:04 -0500, Jim Groeneveld <jim1stat@YAHOO.CO.UK>
>wrote:
>
>>Hi friends,
>>
>>For some time already, I can't say from which explicit example, I have the
>>impression that the SAS code compiler, while treating UPPER and lower case
>>code equally, has a little more trouble to process lower case code. Maybe
>>it firstly converts it to UPPER case before processing further. In order
to
>>test this hypotheses explicitly I built a test program which runs a piece
>>of (dummy) SAS code all in lower case and an identical piece all in UPPER
>>case. The program also keeps track of processing times of each of the
parts
>>of the code, which is being repeated a number of times. Those processing
>>times are being gathered into a SAS dataset and finally a T-test is
>>performed on both case groups. In more than 1 out of 4 times I get
>>significantly differing results.
>>
>>If you would like to reproduce these amazing results you may run my test
>>program, which is available from
>>http://home.hccnet.nl/jim.groeneveld/UPRfoLWR/UPRfoLWR.htm
>>
>>Regards - Jim.
>>--
>>Y. (Jim) Groeneveld, MSc., Biostatistician, Vitatron b.v., NL
>>Jim.Groeneveld_AT_Vitatron.com (replace _AT_ by AT sign)
>>http://www.vitatron.com, http://home.hccnet.nl/jim.groeneveld
>>
>>[common disclaimer]