Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!shadooby!yale!cmcl2!lanl!lambda!jlg
From: jlg@lambda.UUCP (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Adjacent apostrophe edit descriptors
Message-ID: <14183@lambda.UUCP>
Date: 5 Jan 90 21:52:33 GMT
References: <2127@sunset.MATH.UCLA.EDU>
Distribution: na
Lines: 14

From article <2127@sunset.MATH.UCLA.EDU>, by pmontgom@oak.math.ucla.edu:
> 
>         program test 
>         print 10
> 10      format (' Does an apostrophe appear here'  ' or here', '.')

This is non-standard, but is quite common practice anyway.  The reason
is that the standard permits commas to be omitted between some edit
specifiers and not others (as you pointed out).  It is simpler to
implement a parser for FORMAT specifications if the comma is optional
everywhere.  A compiler which does this may still be a standard conforming
one as long as it accepts all standard FORMAT specifications correctly.
A program which uses this extended feature is not standard conforming,
but the compiler is under no obligation to report this.