[Info-vax] COBOL example $MGBLSC

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 9/9/2023 10:20 AM, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> Den 2023-09-09 kl. 16:02, skrev Dave Froble:
>> On 9/9/2023 9:29 AM, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:

>>> "Throughout this manual, and except where specific rules apply, the
>>> hyphen (-) and the underline (_) are treated as the same character
>>> in a user-defined word."
>>
>> I guess that could be compared to "case insensitive", but while I 
>> consider case sensitivity to be less than reasonable, I find the above 
>> to be really stupid. Sure makes searching for specific words in a 
>> program complex.
>>
>> Got to understand Bill's objection to such.
> 
> Stupid or not, it was not known to Bill and created that
> wrong comment of being two differnt symbols. I just showed
> that they are probably handled as the same symbol.
> 
> That doesn't mean that I disagree with you... :-)

Old languages sometimes has some rules that appears
very weird, because the expectation today is determined
by how a hundred newer languages has agreed on doing things
a different way.

Take as an example this perfectly valid Fortran 77 program:

       program weird
       integer*4 abc
       abc = 123
       write(*,*) abc
       write(*,*) a b c
       write(*,*) a     b     c
       end

WTF??

Arne