30 Dec
2005
30 Dec
'05
6:41 p.m.
On Friday 30 December 2005 5:11 pm, Andy Holt wrote:
I still a box of cards and my RPG and COBOL templates around here somewhere.
I wish I could remember what the cards were that we stuck in front of the
program deck. It didn't seem as long as the JCL I used latter on.
I suspect that there was a system PROC that we were making use of.
--
Note one
aspect of card-type programming that's largely a dim memory:
Fixed-width fields. That "C" for comment in FORTRAN goes in column 6,
not 5, not 1, not 7. Similarly, columns 73-80 are ignored by the
compiler and 1-5 are reserved for statement labels. Statements exclusive
of the label, start between column 7 and 72. A lot of languages, had
more stringent placement requirements.
Nearly correct - C for comment went in column 1.
Column 6 was for continuation - anything other than a blank or zero in this
column appended the contents of columns 7-72 to the previous card image for
the compiler.
You were allowed 19 continuation cards in Fortran 4 tho' even a very
complex FORMAT statement rarely got that far.