[Info-vax] Removing the leading $ from commands in a new DCL language

[seasoned_geek]

On Friday, May 1, 2015 at 2:24:36 PM UTC-5, David Froble wrote:
> 
> > At any rate, some of the places I worked actually had a standard of
> > placing the & in column 72 (there was some specific reason they chose
> > 72, perhaps because it matched the old COBOL card reader input stuff,
> > I just don't remember). One thing was certain though. In an 80 column
> > continuous form print out you could easily see the line breaks.
> 
> Stop hitting me, it seemed like a good idea at the time ....
> 
> Yeah, and we used to line up the "!" in the same column.
> 
> :-)

LOL

After the ! we also used to use ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; out to the 72 column point as well, at least for major subroutines.


> 
> > The BASIC compiler/standard then changed and the & became "optional."
> 
> Ok, you talking about VAX/DEC Basic?  I'm not aware the line 
> continuation is optional?  Unless you're talking about different 
> statements.  Yeah, get rid of it.  Let the "&" signify that a single 
> statement is on multiple lines.

PDP under RSTS and, I believe RT as well. Back when we used to be able to chain to a specific line number which many thought horrible, but stopped the stupid from committing atrocities. Every "dangerous" module started

300 GOTO 32767
500 !;;;;;;;;;;  put real code after here

32767 END

All of the real programs had to chain to 500 (or 1000, I forget) in order to actually _do_ anything.

Hmmm...what was that BAS environment setting that changed the floating point library??? SCALE2 or something like that? If you did a LOAD of something like general ledger without it, nothing would add up. The default floating point implementation had the wrong precision or rounding rules or something like that. It was a trick they used to save memory, we only had 64K WORDS for everything.

> 
> > Leave DCL to be DCL.
> 
> Yeah, what he said ....

There are a goodly number of days I actually envy you Dave. You still get paid to work with BASIC.

Can't believe there could still be old LIOCS customers out there. Given a certain programmer's penchant for using IRREGARDLESS (sp?) none of that code would compile today.