Re: The joy of FORTRAN

On 10/18/24 1:41 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On 18 Oct 2024 04:35:09 GMT, rbowman wrote:
 

Our source tree still has vestiges of Fortran that go back more than 20
years and are strictly f77.
>
  recnum = 1 read(adrich,15,rec=recnum) totrec
15   format(i10)
>
100 if(recnum.gt.totrec) goto 500
  read(adrich,105,rec=recnum+1) ch
105 format(1a1)

 You know that Fortran 77 introduced if-then and do-while, right?
 

f-strings are the best thing that happened to Python recently.

 I still prefer printf-style formatting. It works across so many different
languages ... even Lisp.

   There are many attempts to do fine-format printing
   "easy". NONE really do it perfectly. Dunno if there
   *is* a 'perfect'.
   Printf is "ok". FORTRAN "format" is kinda OK. Python
   kinda borrows from both FORTRAN and 'C' as does
   Free Pascal.
   Of course TODAY, fine-formatting generally means
   something in a GUI, not for a terminal or line
   printer. I've got an old OKI pin-printer ... very
   noisy, but that's what "format" and such were for.
   Makes for nice tabular reports and paychecks.
   Oh, try Amazon or something and look at the PRICE
   of OKI pin printers these days !!! Kinda miss
   them ... the buzz sounded like you were DOING
   something  :-)