19 Mar
2017
19 Mar
'17
12:36 p.m.
On Mar 19, 2017, at 2:36 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
...
Still, vendors kept extending their FORTRAN IVs. I think I remarked on
a CDC syntactic extension that resulted in the ability to write an
ambiguous statement, with no clear way to resolve the meaning.
I'm reminded of a T-shirt sold while I was in college (mid 1970s) with this text:
(.)(.)
IKF4084I
I looked that up in Messages and Codes, found a pointer to the IBM COBOL messages manual,
where I found this message text: "Questionable use of parentheses accepted with
doubts as to meaning". So I think CDC was not alone in that bad practice.
paul