Where is MS 3.03 when you need it.

[JohnNichols]

Dear Dr Fortran:

Santa gave me xmas day and my birthday skiing at an unnamed resort.  It had been my wish since 1967.  It was another 10 years before

write(*,160)
160 Format(//"     ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------",//,&
           ,//)

I knew about Fortran.  I assume that is Fortran II days, 

but why did they change formats so an extra comma throws an error, an extra , should just be ignored, it was in MS 3.03.  

Warm regards

A happy skier. 

[Steve_Lionel]

John,

I am sure you know that, just because a compiler accepts certain syntax, that doesn't mean it was ever standard or defined. I have gone back to the Fortran Automatic Coding System for the IBM 704 manual, and consecutive commas in a format have never been allowed. A compiler that chooses to allow them as an extension can do so.

[JohnNichols]

Steve:

Yes, I am aware that compiler slowly fix errors as they move to more closely conform to a standard of a certain date. But, I miss the feature in MS 3.03 that did not complain about an extra comma in a format list. I remember moving onto Power station and then having to fix a lot of code, some from Powell's group at UCB from the late 1960's. 

Sometimes, we are nostalgic for the old times, no seat belts, beer that looked like beer and tasted like beer, ski poles that would launch a kite, less carbon in the air, etc..  

I am sure we can add to the list.  

Have you noticed that sometimes these water cooler comments draw a lot of replies?

PS: I hope Santa blessed you - I offered my ankle biter a new Apple computer and she took Sims 4.  

JMN

[andrew_4619]

When Iook back at MS 3.03 I can truly now appreciate how buggy it was. 

[JohnNichols]

Power Station was a lot worse.  It used to crash for no observable reason. 

[cryptogram]

I used the 3.31 compiler for a lot longer than I probably should have...

One thing I liked about it was that you could fit the entire compiler, linker, libraries, and a decent text editor on a single high capacity diskette.  Was in Zimbabwe back in the 90's working on a power system development project for USAID, and we were waiting for our computers to arrive.  Arranged to get access to a PC at the ZESA power agency in Harare during lunch, and it was handy to have a development environment that we could carry around with us.