"Dennis Lee Bieber" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: | On 8 Aug 2006 04:59:34 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] declaimed the | following in comp.lang.python: | | > | > Some of it may be a reaction from "old-timers" who remember FORTRAN, | > where (if memory serves), code had to start in column 16 and code | > continutations had to be an asterik in column 72 (it's been many years | > since I've done any work in FORTRAN, but you get the idea) | > | Comment C in column 1 | (often extended to accept OS JCL markers too) | Label numeric in 1-5 | Continuation anything in column 6 | (DEC, if using tab indents would take "<tab>&") | Statement column 7-72 | Sequence/ID column 73-80 | | I forget what COBOL used, but it had a few fields of its own.
The COBOL I used (NCR Century, Burroughs, some little IBM) was not fussy - the only thing was that like in assembler, you had to start a lable (that is a symbolic name for an address) in the first column... And you *had* to end what Python calls a "suite" with a fullstop - many hours spent looking for weird bugs.. The breaking of the link between a lable or name and a memory address of something is what I think most newcomers to Python find horribly confusing... - Hendrik -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
