Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!ogccse!blake!uw-beaver!teknowledge-vaxc!sri-unix!garth!smryan
From: smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Is DO WHILE difficult?
Message-ID: <1780@garth.UUCP>
Date: 7 Nov 88 01:54:30 GMT
References: <75326@sun.uucp> <75328@sun.uucp> <604@quintus.UUCP> <2848@ima.ima.isc.com> <11222@cgl.ucsf.EDU>
Reply-To: smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan)
Organization: INTERGRAPH (APD) -- Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 23

>    The common thread between these two articles is the reference

>compiler writer, but for the life of me I can't see how some features
>like blank line == comment, or  "!" == inline comment, or the

Lexical analysis for Fortran tends to be mystical. Blank lines=comment is
hard because you have to send poor soul who doesn't know better, preferably
a new hire just out of school so that if you find his body strung up on some
gallows feeding the crows you wouldn't have wasted an investment, anyway,
who doesn't know better to go in and fight it out with the witches of
no-it's-never-quite-just-an-fsm.

>implementation of a DO WHILE are all that tough!   Wouldn't these

Adding new syntax tends to result in a multiplicative rather than additive
increase in compiler size. Partly because of bad compilers, partly because
Fortran is not (even close to being) orthogonal.
-- 
                                                   -- s m ryan
+--------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
|  `Lisa.' He swallowed hard. `Lisa take my hand.'       |    Enough of this   |
|  She looked up into his eyes and slowly took his hand. |    stuffy-stuff.    |
+--------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+