[Info-vax] COBOL example $MGBLSC

[bill]

On 9/9/2023 12:15 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 9/9/2023 11:36 AM, bill wrote:
>> 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.  :-)
> 
> Today it is considered weird that you can insert arbitrary
> spaces in variable names.
> 

That is all about parsing and really has nothing to do with the
function of the language.  The separator in that context is a comma,
not a space, tab or any other invisible character.  :-)

bill