[Info-vax] Fortran

[abrsvc]

On Wednesday, December 5, 2018 at 8:18:26 PM UTC-5, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 12/5/18 12:40 PM, abrsvc wrote:
> > On Wednesday, December 5, 2018 at 12:15:31 PM UTC-5, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> >> Bill Gunshannon  <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> [regarding FORMAT H]
> >>>
> >>> Once again, matter of opinion.  I (and I am sure most experienced
> >>> Fortran programmers) don't find them all that difficult.
> >>
> >> Come on.  How many times over the years have you miscounted the field
> >> length?
> >> --scott
> > 
> > Not so much of a problem when programs were on cards, but with terminals (and emulators), what is a TAB?  1 character or some depending on where you enter the TAB.  This is where many of the counts are wrong.
> 
> A TAB is one character ^I, OCTAL 011, DECIMAL 11, HEX 0B.  One
> character.  Never to be confused with that a display device like
> a terminal or printer does with it.
> 

We agree.  The point I was making though, is that on a screen, a TAB can "look" like multiple spaces.  This can/is a problem when using the Hollerith notation.  If you (the programmer) are not very careful, you can easily get the count wrong in this case.

Dan