Real Old School Programming (was: Re: Where to buy a Selectric?)

[Mike]

On Friday 30 December 2005 5:11 pm, Andy Holt wrote:
> > Note one aspect of card-type programming that's largely a dim memory:
> > Fixed-width fields.  That "C" for comment in FORTRAN goes in column 6,
> > not 5, not 1, not 7.  Similarly, columns 73-80 are ignored by the
> > compiler and 1-5 are reserved for statement labels.  Statements exclusive
> > of the label, start between column 7 and 72.   A lot of languages, had
> > more stringent placement requirements.
>
> Nearly correct - C for comment went in column 1.
> Column 6 was for continuation - anything other than a blank or zero in this
> column appended the contents of columns 7-72 to the previous card image for
> the compiler.
> You were allowed 19 continuation cards in Fortran 4 tho' even a very
> complex FORMAT statement rarely got that far.

I still a box of cards and my RPG and COBOL templates around here somewhere. 

I wish I could remember what the cards were that we stuck in front of the 
program deck.  It didn't seem as long as the JCL I used latter on.  
I suspect that there was a system PROC that we were making use of.


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