[Info-vax] COBOL example $MGBLSC

[bill]

On 9/9/2023 10:26 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> 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??
> 

As an old school Fortran programmer as well as COBOL (Fortran was my
second language other than various assemblers) all I see in this is
that you don't understand Fortran.  That is a perfectly valid, not
weird at all, program.  If you wanted it to treat "a", "b" and "c"
as separate and distinct variables you should have used commas as the
the language expects.  Spaces in that context are meaningless.  :-)

bill