wdr@wang.com (William Ricker) (04/29/91)
[Followup to Alt.Folklore.Computers, please!] mrs@netcom.COM (Morgan Schweers) writes: >Greetings, > Can someone confirm (preferably in a post, so my MBX doesn't flood) >the truth/falsity of FORTRAN being the starter of 'I' as a generic loop >variable? Fortran is indubitubly the first major highlevel language in which I was the generic loop index variable, since it was the first major HOL. 'I' was used in this context because it was the traditional index variable for vectors and matrices in mathematics/physics/etc. before computers, and thus was used, I'd be sure, in the pseudo-code written out for the machine-language coders in the pre-fortran Bad Old Days, just as it was in the give-it-to-a-room-full-of-frieden days and the dip-pen-and-foolscap days. The use of 'I' did not arise from fortran declaring it to be integer, but rather Fortran reserved I-N (or was it O?) for integer variables by default because that approximated existing usage in the domain of FORmulae that FORTRAN was to TRANslate into machine-language without the intervention of programers (who in those days hand-translated formulae into assembley and thence to ML, unless that step was performed by a lower assistant, the Coder). -- /s/ Bill Ricker wdr@wang.wang.com "The Freedom of the Press belongs to those who own one." *** Warning: This account is not authorized to express opinions. ***