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From: jlg@cochiti.lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Is this a "feature"?
Message-ID: <24424@lanl.gov>
Date: 24 May 91 14:00:19 GMT
References: <1991May23.160841.402@ac.dal.ca>
Sender: news@lanl.gov
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 24

In article <1991May23.160841.402@ac.dal.ca>, scrutton@ac.dal.ca writes:
|> [...]
|> I'd like to find out if the SAVE statement existed in FORTRAN IV (66).

FORTRAN IV and ASA (pre ANSI) FORTRAN 66 are not the same.  Fortran IV
was an IBM product and FORTRAN 66 was an ASA standard.  There were
considerable differences between the two.  I don't remember whether
FORTRAN IV had a SAVE statement, but ASA Fortran 66 did not.  In fact, 
I seem to remember that in the 66 standard the definition status of a 
local variable across calls was not even mentioned.  Many implementations
(MOST) implemented all local variables statically - and so, many users 
began to depend on that.

|> [...]
|> I've also run across a DECODE statement which appears to be a precursor
|> to the (what's it called...) I/O using character variables as file units.
|> Is this yet another 66ism? VMS sure didn't like it but I thought 77 was
|> upward compatible with 66.

No, FORTRAN 66 did not have DECODE defined.  Internal I/O was added to
the 77 standard as a cleaner version of DECODE (which was becoming 
UNIVERSAL).

J. Giles