Hi Robin
You said: "... BTW, the change in format of the DO was essential
in preventing the flaw in FORTRAN (which still exists)
by which a period instead of the first comma
changes the DO statement into an assignment statement. ..."
Have you ever read the Datamation article regarding the comma which cost
$15,00,000 (in the '60s)?
Regards,
David
On 2022-03-29 08:08, Robin Vowels wrote:
On 2022-03-29 22:46, Seymour J Metz wrote:
I'm not going to mention all of them, but you obviously noticed that I
mentioned DO.
Then, it's obvious that you don't know what you are talking about.
Are you seriously claiming that "DO K = 1 TO 10 BY 2;" looks more like
"DO 10 K = 1, 10, 2 " than it does like "for K := 1 step 2 until 10
do"?
Given that the PL/I language was derived from FORTRAN IV,
and that the name of the language was FORTRAN VI,
it is reasonable to assert that the PL/I version was
derived from FORTRAN IV, and that the keyword 'TO'
was only required to be added to the short form,
and 'TO' and 'BY' to be added to the long form.
PL/I went a lot further than FORTRAN IV:
for example, multiple iterations were added, and,
for example, the 'TO' component could be omitted.
BTW, the change in format of the DO was essential
in preventing the flaw in FORTRAN (which still exists)
by which a period instead of the first comma
changes the DO statement into an assignment statement.
________________________________________
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on
behalf of Robin Vowels [robi...@dodo.com.au]
Sent: Monday, March 28, 2022 8:45 PM
Subject: Re: PL/I question
----- Original Message -----
From: "Seymour J Metz" <sme...@gmu.edu>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
To: <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2022 10:47 AM
Subject: Re: PL/I question
You claimed that a lot of things came from FORTRAN that don'r look
remotely like FORTRAN syntax,
Name them.
some of which look like Algol 60. A good example is the DO statement,
which looks a lot more like an Algol for statement than a FORTRAN DO.
Try
DO 10 K = 1, 10 -> DO K = 1 TO 10;
DO 10 K = 1, 10, 2 -> DO K = 1 TO 10 BY 2;
Some of what you claimed came from FORTRAN doesn't even exist in PL/I.
Name them.
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