Re: Clearing storage may not be good for you
I believe that on an early version of MULTICS some programmer cleared a large array by columns instead of rows. This caused a page fault for just about every memory access.
On the IBM 1620 using FORTRAN copying the value of one uninitialized variable to another variable would sometimes clear all of memory because the flag on the uninitialized variable wasn't set so it would copy until it hit a digit with a flag set. But all of the set flags were cleared out by the copy so it never stopped. A program like:
I = J (J not initialized)
(depending on the order of I and J in memory) was all that was needed.
The IBM 704 had a clear memory button that was active only when the machine was running!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
