I never found this question to be dumb, especially when I was asking it.

I searched the HP 3000 archives, and also the HP site(s), and could only
find the ambiguous reference to setting bits.  Well I was familiar with
doing this in COBOL for the AOptions and FOptions for the FOPEN etc.,
intrinsics, but I could not find a single definitive example of how to do
it for VSETNEXTSENTURY.  And I haven't seen a section in MPEX help or on
the laserdisc entitled "how to set bits for JCW".  I've set the JCW for
different purposes, but wasn't aware that this was "bit setting".

Curtis Larsen wrote:

> Okay, pardon this dumb question, but my brain has frozen solid for
> today.
>
> According to the extremely ambiguous info, we need to set the 14th
> and/or 15th bits of the VSETNEXTCENTURY JCW in order to enable certain
> VPLUS Y2K behaviors.  (All other bits must be reset.)
>
> How does one do this using the SETJCW command?
>
> I thought it would be "SETJCW VSETNEXTCENTURY WARN", but that doesn't
> work.
> (Of course, I'm not sure what the manual considers the LSB to be.
> Either we're talking about 16,384 or 4, but we're not seeing happy on
> either choice.)
>
> Of course, this spins off two other questions:
>
> 1. Isn't there some sort of binary prefix operator like there is for
> octal and hex?
> "SETJCW VSETNEXTCENTURY B010000000000000" would be pretty nifty.
>
> 2. WHY in the world was SETTING BITS determined to be a Good Way To Do
> It?
> Wouldn't something like "SETJCW VSETNEXTCENTURY 1" and "SETJCW
> VSETSIGDIGITS 4" be easier to understand?
>
> Many thanks in advance for any answers.
>
> Curtis