On 02/10/18 23:25, David Kastrup wrote: > J Martin Rushton <martinrushto...@btinternet.com> writes: > >> This discussion is strangely familiar. As one who learnt on FORTRAN IV >> many years ago, I'm used to seeing that: >> >> READ INPUT TAPE 5, 501, IA, IB, IC >> and >> READINPUTTAPE5,501,IA,IB,IC >> or even >> RE ADIN PUTTA PE5,5 01,I A,I B,I C >> >> are the same. I'm sure there were those back in the late '50s arguing >> over the use of spaces and numbers within variables. >> >> (OT) I've even seen code which intentionally mangled FORTRAN source to >> make it unreadable, like the third example above. > > That's more like making spaces not have any lexical meaning, ever. > Basically, if it cannot be part of an identifier, it also cannot > separate them. Also you have to be aware that a fresh punch card is > both empty and contains 80 spaces. Basically spaces are not even > recognizable characters in the original typical Fortran input medium. > > For TeX it was more the decision to be able to write things like > > \count5=7 > > and LilyPond input is very very loosely modeled after that (via MusicTeX > and MPP). > Quite correct. Early FORTRAN compilers eliminated all spaces (other than those in Hollerith strings) and then parsed the resultant mess. -- J Martin Rushton MBCS
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
_______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
