Women

[Max Demian]

Yorkshire people have to use "whilst" and "while" means "until" there. That's why there aren't any Yorkshire programmers.

[Bob Eager]

I am reminded of a story from ICL, in the early 1970s. This was during development of their 2900 series (I worked on it a lot, particularly operating system code, although not at ICL). The 2900 was knowm pre- release, as 'New Range'. Here is the story; my comments in square brackets.

"At a meeting of the ?New Range Upper Sub-Range Primitive Interface [instruction set] Interpretive Committee?, chaired by John Bowthorpe, there was a lengthy debate one day about the proposed implementation of the SWEQ (Scan While Equal) and SWNE (Scan While Not Equal) instructions [used for scanning strings for a particular character]. Near the end of the meeting, one of the engineers got up and said that he was happy with the implementation but unhappy with the names of the instructions. He explained that he came from Oldham and that in parts of Lancashire ?while? meant ?until?, so that any Lancastrian engineers and programmers would interpret the instructions in exactly the opposite way to that intended. An action was duly placed for the Architects to rule on this. At the next meeting the chairman came to this action and solemnly declared that the matter had been duly considered and the instruction names would remain as they were. It was felt that ?ICL specifications could not be written to cater for ethnic minorities?."

And indeed those are the names under which I used those instructions.

[Pamela]

Lovely. :)

Not only is the UK and US divided by a common language but so are parts of the UK!

Copied to alt.usage.english where they have an eye for such oddities.

[Brian Gaff]

So, lets get this right, she thought that there was another light above the tray that was blocking the light? I have come across fridges with light pipes that do this kind of thing in the old days but not much light seemed to get through. I'd imagine most fridges these days might use led lights and one could scatter them about if you wanted. OK I'm ignoring your point but it did make me think of design. Of course these days I could just turn the light off and I'd be no wiser. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Often one learns by experience. These days it seems experimentation and experience are not allowed and instead people are told about stuff instead. WE used to make shadow animals on the wall using a light and our hands. Brian

[the Omrud]

(Retired long-term ICL/Fujitsu person here)

This use of "while" (which I encountered when I migrated from Worcestershire to Manchester in 1975) can cause problems in the real world.

- Do not cross the road while the red light is flashing.

[Bob Eager]

Incidentally, I found a hardware design fault in our 2960. They never did fix it; I suspect I never got to anyone who understood the problem. I fixed it by hacking the microcode.

More here:

[the Omrud]

Ooh, thanks. I'll have a look through that later.

[tim...]

they can't be really, otherwise we wouldn't have both words

there must be some difference in usage (not that I know what it is)

tim

[tim...]

is a Swede a Swede, or is it a Turnip?

tim

[tim...]

I managed to turn off my "wired in" doorbell in much the same way.

I didn't call in a man to fix it though

tim

[Robin]

I don't see any difference in the context in which Adam used it. Like most synonyms, they go their separate ways sometimes but not others.

[ARW]

Whilst I appreciate your concern the truth is I could not give a flying f*ck:-)

[Cursitor Doom]

Neither can I. Got a copy of Fowler's about 20 feet away but can't be arsed to check.

[Peter Johnson]

I heard an item about this on the radio a year ot two back. While is considered to be preferable to whilst but if you use whilst then you should also use amongst to be consistent.

[ARW]

Use a tape measure:-)

[Bob Eager]

Or, presumably, in some parts of the country ... untilst!

[Graeme]

LOL!

[Bill Wright]

Why not? Since English is a mongrel language it has many examples of two words meaning exactly the same thing.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

What is one of those?

Bill