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From: hirchert@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Fortran 8x:tabs
Message-ID: <50500142@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 7 Jul 89 17:06:00 GMT
Lines: 23
Nf-ID: #N:uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:50500142:000:1223
Nf-From: uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!hirchert    Jul  7 12:06:00 1989


There has been some discussion of whether the tab character should be allowed
in Fortran 8x source.

Although many processors allow tabs, there a many different interpretations
given to them.  The problem with standardizing existing practice in this kind
of situation is that for every program that becomes standard-conforming, there
are probably two or three that are "broken" because the vendors old extensions
no longer works.

Therefore, I believe it would be a mistake to try to standardize the use of
tab in the existing source form.  However, it would probably be possible to
support tab in the new source form, since there is no existing practice to
break and the analogies to the existing fixed form extensions are largely
indistinguishable in the new source form because of the lack of specific
column boundaries.  This could probably be handled in a manner similar to the
way lower case letters are handled; i.e., if a processor has additional "white
space" characters, they are treated as equivalent to blank in essentially the
same circumstances as lower case letters are treated as equivalent to upper
case letters.

Kurt W. Hirchert     hirchert@ncsa.uiuc.edu
National Center for Supercomputing Applications