3 ms·

I'd be willing to bet it's because some trader's tooling written 20 years ago broke after a format change so they successfully raised hell to make sure it would

by chaps 4y ago

I'd be willing to bet it's because some trader's tooling written 20 years ago broke after a format change so they successfully raised hell to make sure it would stay the same format forever. Probably perl.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
cagenut 4y ago
probably long pre-dates perl, like RPG or CICS
- mulmen 4y ago
  According to the archive [1] this is a similar format to the (printed? faxed?) reports as far back as 1964. The annual version [2] goes back to 1941 and uses a similar format. Talk about backwards compatibility! [1]: https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/tm70mv177?locale=en&page=71#release-items https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/tm70mv... [2]: https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/k3569432s?locale=en&page=9#release-items https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/k35694...
h2odragon 4y ago
I wrote parsers for some of this data pre-1990 in GWBASIC. Replacing COBOL code that did the same.