[Info-vax] Fortran

[abrsvc]

On Wednesday, December 5, 2018 at 8:28:41 PM UTC-5, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 12/5/18 8:23 PM, abrsvc wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Careful?  Once it becomes a habit careful really doesn't
> apply that much.  Probably comes from my time as a COBOL
> programmer where spacing of source lines was significant.
> 
> bill

I agree.  I can't enumerate the number of times I have "fixed" these types of problems over the last 35+ years.