[Info-vax] Text processing examples with Fortran requested

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

Rob Brown <mylastname at gmcl.com> wrote:
 
> Strangest one I ever saw (about 1975 or so) was something like:
 
>       DOUBLE X /some long number/
>       EXTERNAL X
>       I=X()
>       STOP
>       END
 
> WATFIV and FORTRAN G would fail to compile.  FORTRAN H would compile. 
> When you ran the program, it printed the time of day.

COMMON block names and subroutine/function names are both
external names.  An initialized COMMON looks the same to the
linker as does a subroutine or functions (SD in the object module).

Otherwise,

    LA 1,1
    SVC 12
    BR 14

is eight bytes, X'411000000A0C07F4'

and is a floating point number slightly greater than one,
which is a call to the system TIME routine, which returns
the date in R0 in packed decimal form.  Maybe something like

      REAL*8 X
      COMMON /IDATE/ X
      X=1.00000003742798025
      I=IDATE(1)/16
      WRITE(6,1)
1     FORMAT(1X,Z5)
      STOP
      END

-- glen