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From: sakkinen@tukki.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Message from God (Fortran history question answered) sig blanks
Message-ID: <2699@tukki.jyu.fi>
Date: 15 Jan 90 06:59:11 GMT
References: <5974@eos.UUCP> <1990Jan13.154645.506@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us>
Reply-To: sakkinen@jytko.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen)
          SAKKINEN@FINJYU.bitnet (alternative)
Organization: University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
Lines: 26

In article <1990Jan13.154645.506@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us> johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine) writes:
-In article <5974@eos.UUCP> eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya) writes:
->From: John Backus <backus@almvma>
->We made one or more blanks equivalent to one blank because we felt
->this would allow a user to arrange his program more meaningfully;
-
-Quite reasonable.  The real question is why they made one blank equivalent
-to no blanks, to the consternation of compiler writers ever since.  I suppose
-it was so you could write the variable DELTAX as DELTA X as in
-
-      DELTA X = X(I+1) - X(I)
-
-but it sure can be confusing.

The decision in original FORTRAN to make blanks nonsignificant is
understandable enough: the language was small and simple and _really_
meant to be a FORmula TRANslator. What is difficult to understand
is the lack of insight and courage to fix this problem when the Fortran 77
standard was prepared; likewise the sticking to an archaic card input format.

Markku Sakkinen
Department of Computer Science
University of Jyvaskyla (a's with umlauts)
Seminaarinkatu 15
SF-40100 Jyvaskyla (umlauts again)
Finland