eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya) (01/13/90)
I forgot which newsgroup asked this.
From: John Backus <backus@almvma>
To: Eugene Miya <eugene@eos.arc.nasa.gov>
Subject: Re: another fortran history question
In-Reply-To: Your message of Fri, 15 Dec 89 14:52:35 PST,
<8912152252.AA10825@eos.arc.nasa.gov>
Eugene,
We made one or more blanks equivalent to one blank because we felt
this would allow a user to arrange his program more meaningfully;
also, we felt that it was often hard for keypunchers to tell whether
there was one or two blanks in some circumstances. Hope this clears
up this vital question! (And I hope I'm remembering correctly!)
--Johnjohnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine) (01/13/90)
In article <5974@eos.UUCP> eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya) writes: >From: John Backus <backus@almvma> >We made one or more blanks equivalent to one blank because we felt >this would allow a user to arrange his program more meaningfully; Quite reasonable. The real question is why they made one blank equivalent to no blanks, to the consternation of compiler writers ever since. I suppose it was so you could write the variable DELTAX as DELTA X as in DELTA X = X(I+1) - X(I) but it sure can be confusing. On a related note, I wonder when was the first time that someone wrote the classic: DO 10 I = 1.10 -- John R. Levine, Segue Software, POB 349, Cambridge MA 02238, +1 617 864 9650 johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us, {ima|lotus|spdcc}!esegue!johnl "Now, we are all jelly doughnuts."
sakkinen@tukki.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen) (01/15/90)
In article <1990Jan13.154645.506@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us> johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine) writes: -In article <5974@eos.UUCP> eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya) writes: ->From: John Backus <backus@almvma> ->We made one or more blanks equivalent to one blank because we felt ->this would allow a user to arrange his program more meaningfully; - -Quite reasonable. The real question is why they made one blank equivalent -to no blanks, to the consternation of compiler writers ever since. I suppose -it was so you could write the variable DELTAX as DELTA X as in - - DELTA X = X(I+1) - X(I) - -but it sure can be confusing. The decision in original FORTRAN to make blanks nonsignificant is understandable enough: the language was small and simple and _really_ meant to be a FORmula TRANslator. What is difficult to understand is the lack of insight and courage to fix this problem when the Fortran 77 standard was prepared; likewise the sticking to an archaic card input format. Markku Sakkinen Department of Computer Science University of Jyvaskyla (a's with umlauts) Seminaarinkatu 15 SF-40100 Jyvaskyla (umlauts again) Finland