By William A. Logan
Communications of the ACM,
February 1960,
Vol. 3 No. 2, Pages 85-86
10.1145/366959.366973
Comments
Once an installation has determined that it would be advantageous to be able to internally identify the contents of each reel of tape on hand and to be able to check those identifications by programming, consideration is given to a Tape. Labeling Routine. The parameters of such a routine are limited only by the inventiveness of the programmers of the installation as they request (and frequently demand) that the label on the tape contain block counts, can numbers, pass tallies, messages, reminders, first names, last names, number of tape inches available, security classifications, unit the tape is to be mounted on, and hundreds of other “necessary” pieces of data which will serve to illustrate the complexity of data processing. The routine which is to translate these labels is oftentimes encumbered with brilliant formulas which enable it (if it can ever be completely debugged) to manipulate the information and make decisions of astounding magnitude. What little core memory space remains is then used to process the data in the file which the label identified.
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