From: Larry__Weiss on
Michael Metcalf wrote:
> ... and here it's modern transformation. Significant blanks really do make a
> difference (and to think we debated their value for so long).
>

What does the current language specification say regarding the
significance of spaces?

- Larry
From: glen herrmannsfeldt on
In comp.lang.fortran Richard E Maine <nospam(a)see.signature> wrote:
> glen herrmannsfeldt <gah(a)ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

>> That wouldn't get around any restrictions on initialization
>> expression, though. For example:

>> PARAMETER (XYZ=sin(123.))
>> EXTERNAL sin

> Correct. I had debated going into that, but decided not to, as it seemed
> a side issue to the question of how to specify user procedures as
> opposed to intrinsic ones. If you specify a user procedure for sin() and
> use it in an initialization expression, that doesn't change the
> interpretation of it as a user procedure. It just means that the code is
> illegal.

I wasn't so sure, but the example using an intrinsic in a PARAMETER
looked like it might not have been a side issue.

> No, user procedures aren't allowed in initialization expressions. That
> would take some pretty fundamental changes -
(snip)

> After all, having a user procedure do things like initialize
> variables doesn't seem so awfully horrible, as long as one deals with
> questions of what order things get done in,

I believe Java has something like this, related to what you
can do in a class initializer. I haven't run into it, but you
can reference other classes in a class initializer, which then
have to be initialized. It is possible for things to get done
in the wrong order, that is, to reference something before it
is initialized.

-- glen
From: Richard E Maine on
Larry__Weiss <lfw(a)airmail.net> wrote:

> Michael Metcalf wrote:
> > ... and here it's modern transformation. Significant blanks really do make a
> > difference (and to think we debated their value for so long).
> >
> What does the current language specification say regarding the
> significance of spaces?

As of f90, when free source form was introduced, the short version is
that blanks are significant in free source form, but not in the old
fixed source form.

Note that both source forms are still part of the language. Some people
are confused about that or use incorrect terminology. For example, you
will see people asking about how to convert code from f77 to f90 when
what they really mean is how to convert it from fixed source form to
free source form (or perhaps any of several other things, none of which
are correctly described as converting from f77 to f90).

--
Richard Maine | Good judgment comes from experience;
email: my first.last at org.domain| experience comes from bad judgment.
org: nasa, domain: gov | -- Mark Twain
From: glen herrmannsfeldt on
In comp.lang.fortran Richard E Maine <nospam(a)see.signature> wrote:

> The old CalComp plotter HCBS (Host Computer Basic Software - I think)
> library included an external procedure named SCALE. This library was
> widely used in its day. Offshoots of it, using compatible interfaces (or
> nearly so - the transition from f66 Hollerith to f77 character caused a
> bit of a glitch) continue to be used today. The f90 standard added an
> intrinsic named SCALE.

SCALE1, SYMBOL1, PLOT1, AXIS1, the ones I used always had the 1.

I once wrote a Fortran PLOT1 to run a different plotter, without
rewriting SYMBOL1 and AXIS1. I had it running fine.
Someone else tried it, with a different compiler, and it didn't work.
It seems that SYMBOL1 calls PLOT1 (both originally in assembler)
assuming register 0 is preserved. Some Fortran compilers
would preserve R0, others would not.

-- glen
From: Stan Barr on
On 17 Oct 2006 16:07:59 -0700, Terence <tbwright(a)cantv.net> wrote:

>And later used the Mercury STAR computer for De Havilland "Blue Streak"
>guidance simulations

There's a coincidence!
I was looking at a couple of photos of Blue Streak in a magazine yesterday:
The production line at Stevenage and the launch site at Spadeham.

--
Cheers,
Stan Barr stanb .at. dial .dot. pipex .dot. com
(Remove any digits from the addresses when mailing me.)

The future was never like this!