2026-10-15 16:50 UTC
@timbray@cosocial.ca I knew FORTRAN 77 decades ago. The fact that column offsets were important delimiters because of punch cards was quaint in a cool way.
IIRC
- Columns 1-5 were punch card number. Unused in the 1990s
- Column 6 was a continuation flag. If it was blank, it was a new line, but if it wasn’t then the statement from the previous line was continued on to this line
- Columns 7-75? Were the program statement
I think 76-80ish were some other reserved field. Maybe that was the punch card number and 1-5 was something else. It also was unused in the 1990s
Replies (1)
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@PeterLudemann@mathstodon.xyz 2026-10-15 18:09
@jonathankoren@sfba.social Fortran IV used columns 1-5 for statement labels (numeric only), which could be used by GOTOs; 6 was continuation; 7-72 was program text (blanks were not significant); 73-80 could be used for anything but typically was sequence numbers (in intervals of 100, to allow insertions) for putting things back together after spilling the cards on the floor. The cards wore out gradually over time, at which point they were put through a duplicating punch that also resequenced the cards. @timbray@cosocial.ca