Re: The joy of FORTRAN

On 9/26/24 12:18 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

On 2024-09-26, 186282@ud0s4.net <186283@ud0s4.net> wrote:
 

    Hmm ... re-did a number of my fave funcs, mostly
    for dealing with ascii-delimited strings/records,
    in FORTRAN when I did my last little app to annoy
    the new boyz. Gotta dig up that pgm and review.
    PICK had "field(str,delim,fldnum)" which I always
    found very useful, so that's usually the first thing
    i'd move to another lang.

 One of the favourite functions in my library pulls the
next token from a delimited string, but as opposed to
strtok() it does it non-destructively and can handle
empty strings.

   NEVER liked "strtok()" ... but, with some ugliness,
   it IS adaptable.
   The PICK "field()" was just beautiful for picking
   out exactly desired fields/subfields/sub-sub-fields
   from any ascii-delimited string. Look at the docs
   for Revelation/AREV to see how it works.
   I always liked ascii-delimited multi-value records.
   Hey, you can actually READ them. They are also VERY
   easy and cheap for microcontrollers and such to
   create on the fly.

    Oh, one lang I can't stomach - ADA.

 What does the Americans with Disabilities Act have to do with
programming?  (Hint: "Ada" is not an acronym; the language is
named after Ada Lovelace, reputedly the first programmer.)

   :-)
   As for lady Ada - apparently she was kinda
   unbearable ... SUCH an egomaniac, SO assured of
   her own math/IQ superiority and EAGER to rub
   it in ........
   However I will give her credit for seeing the
   "wider view" of what the Babbage machine/approach
   could deliver. Babbage only saw boring math - SHE
   saw word-processing/analysis and beyond.
   Ah, poor Babbage ... ENLIGHTENED vision, but only
   GEARS AND COGS to work with ! 50+ years before
   his ideal time .......