Fun_People Archive
29 Aug
Test cases

Date: Sun, 29 Aug 93 16:05:10 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: Test cases

 From: vangogh.CS.Berkeley.EDU!bostic (Keith Bostic)

[[ In RISKS 14.89 ]]

The Feedback section of the latest New Scientist relates the following
Computer Weekly story about an unfortunate programmer at an unnamed
bank.  Apparently, the bank wanted to target its wealthiest customers
with a mailshot promoting various new services and the programmer in
question wrote a program to select the 2000 wealthiest customers from
the bank's records and to generate an appropriate letter for each.  In
the process of testing the program, he made use of a fictitious customer
named Rich Bastard.

Unfortunately, as you may already have guessed, something went amiss and
every single one of the bank's 2000 prize customers received a letter
which began "Dear Rich Bastard, ..."

© 1993 Peter Langston