Article View: alt.folklore.computers
Article #1267Cryptic Code (was Re: Cryptic comments )
From: B... Scott Dickson
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1990 23:11
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1990 23:11
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In article <66...@internal.Apple.COM>, l...@Apple.COM (Larry Rosenstein) says: > >In article <1990Feb5.1...@newcastle.ac.uk> >Lindsay....@newcastle.ac.uk (Lindsay F. Marshall) writes: >>wonderful program (which was not distributed!!) that systematically >... >>variable names used in the program which were rewritten with long >... >>The whole effect was to make the program *completely* unreadable and >>unmaintainable. > >I just saw an advertisement for a product that did the same thing. It's >called the C Shroud and it's published by Gimpel Software. > Source code from Precision Visuals for some of their graphics products, such as DI-3000 for IBM mainframes is pretty unreadable fortran. They have a filter that removes all comments except for the copyright. Then all lines are left justified and all blanks removed. And then, to add insult to injury, all of the variable names are changed to strings consisting only of the characters I,O,1, and 0. And this is supposed to be usable source? It compiles, but it takes a braver person than I to change it without a lot of studying.
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mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!gmdzi!unido!mcsun!sunic!luth!eru!bloom-beacon!mintaka!think!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!bsdReferences:
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Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!gmdzi!unido!mcsun!sunic!luth!eru!bloom-beacon!mintaka!think!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!bsd From: B...@psuvm.psu.edu (Scott Dickson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Cryptic Code (was Re: Cryptic comments ) Message-ID: <90045.181107BSD@psuvm.psu.edu> Date: 14 Feb 90 23:11:07 GMT References: <1990Feb5.102014.13316@newcastle.ac.uk> <6693@internal.Apple.COM> Distribution: alt Organization: Penn State University Lines: 25 Posted: Thu Feb 15 00:11:07 1990 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit