On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 07:34:36 -0700 Phil Smith <p...@voltage.com> wrote:
:>Binyamin Dissen wrote, in part: :>>And for the non-Fortran programmer :>> DO 25 I = 1,10 :>>is identical to :>> DO25I=1,10 :>>but different than :>> DO25I=1.10 :>For the non-FORTRAN geeks who are wondering why anyone would ever think the last is the same: NASA had a bug due to this. While often blamed for the Mariner 1 failure, it seems that may not have been the case after all, but it's still interesting. See https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?t=862715 :>When you realized that :> DO25I=1,10 :>defines the start of a loop, but :> DO25I=1.10 :>is an assignment statement, you really wonder what about the FORTRAN compiler parser! I'm sure it made sense at the time, and can see how it would be done, but it still seems to me like a strange way to design a language. Unlike COBOL which required white space, Fortran completely ignored white space. Also, COBOL has reserved words - Fortran does not. The first step in compiling was to squash the statement (while paying special attention to FORMAT statements where you might have nnnH, while recognizing that 30 FORMAT(I5,I10)=28 is a valid assignment statement (as long a FORMAT was declared as an array) while 30 FORMAT(I5,I10,6H =28) ) is a Format statement -- Binyamin Dissen <bdis...@dissensoftware.com> http://www.dissensoftware.com Director, Dissen Software, Bar & Grill - Israel Should you use the mailblocks package and expect a response from me, you should preauthorize the dissensoftware.com domain. I very rarely bother responding to challenge/response systems, especially those from irresponsible companies. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
