4 ms·

I used to have Fortran77 notepad for hand writing code — later I would type it in. Always began in the 8th column if I remember right?

• username223 8y ago
  Yep -- old-school fixed-format Fortran had one column for the "c"(omment) marker, seven for the statement number (maybe 5 plus spaces on either side?), then 72 for the code before you fell off the end of the punch card.
  • drfuchs 8y ago
    No, you get all 7 spaces for the statement number; live it up a little! Don't know if it's still the case, but in FORTRAN IV you don't need spaces between keywords and variable names. So when the compiler sees "FORI=2" it has to look still further ahead to decide if this is a for-loop (FORI=2TO9DO) or an assignment to a variable named FORI. Decidedly not a context-free grammar; you can't even figure out the tokens without the ad-hoc parser getting involved.
    • gnufx 8y ago
      No. In fixed format form, statement numbers are columns 1-5. "FORI=2TO9DO" is an unclassifiable statement; try "DOII=...".
      • drfuchs 8y ago
        You’re right! I was remembering columns 73-80 reserved for “card number”.
      • gnufx 8y ago
        Oops, on the obvious typo, too late to edit. Aye, aye.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]