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rbanffy
on March 3, 2017
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The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy
In FORTRAN 77, it'a syntax error to put a statement before column 7
btschaegg
on March 3, 2017
[–]
Interesting! Can you explain why that is the case? Were the first 6 characters reserved for the line number or goto marks?
rbanffy
on March 3, 2017
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Yes. Columns 1 to 5 are for labels. Column 6, if it has any character there (usually "$"), marks a continuation from the previous line.
I think the column 6 rule and line continuations were removed for FORTRAN 95.
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