12 Oct
2008
12 Oct
'08
1:55 p.m.
On 11 Oct 2008 at 5:57, Jeff Jonas wrote:
It took me a while to realize that there was nothing
magic
about the first character as carriage control,
so instead of
format (" ","and more")
I evolved to
format (" and more")
Wow, quoted literals in FORTRAN?! For me, it was pretty much:
FORMAT( 1H , 8HAND MORE)
CDC FORTRAN had an extension that allowed for:
FORMAT( HX X, H*AND MORE*)
But that one bit back. Consider that FORTRAN (at least in the II/IV
variety) has no reserved words or significant spaces (outside of
reserved statement columns and Hollerith literals). Some clever lad
at (IIRC) ETH asked what one should make of the statements:
DIMENSION FORMAT(10), Y(10)
INTEGER X, HX
...
100 FORMAT(HX)=Y(X)
That was one PSR that was put on "deferred" status indefinitely. It
was suggested that if the FORMAT was referred to in some I/O
statement that the ambiguity could be resolved, but there was no rule
that FORMAT statements, like statement labels, had to be referenced
by anything--i.e., "orphans" were permitted by the language. So the
solution wasn't 100 percent reliable.
Didn't some of the later train printers take to storing the carriage
control tape in (printer) core to avoid problems with wear and
breakage?
Cheers,
Chuck