From: Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Gnat 2013 is out!
Date: Thu, 30 May 2013 19:09:56 -0400
Date: 2013-05-30T19:09:56-04:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <0jmfq8pekf23kpe5ea0mki6tgtclisoi73@invalid.netcom.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: CDCCC5DD.2F51A%yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk
On Thu, 30 May 2013 09:01:17 +0100, Bill Findlay
<yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk> declaimed the following in comp.lang.ada:
>
> The worst 'program' I ever saw was 'written' in 'FORTRAN'.
> Yes, those quotes are meant to scare you.
>
> In the mid 80s a graduate student visiting Glasgow was sent to me for help.
> A program, which she had brought with her from an even more ancient seat of
> learning, would not work on the GU Computing Service computer.
<snip>
> Each subroutine had many parameters, the actual parameters of most calls
> being being a selection of variables from the COMMON areas.
>
> Variables in COMMON were also used directly.
> Many times. Many, many times. Many times.
>
Ouch! While FORTRAN's pass-by-reference could be dangerous (the
infamous [and maybe urban legend] non-constant constant in some early
compilers) when the same actual is provided to multiple arguments,
mixing COMMON and argument passing at the same time is something I never
encountered.
And the Xerox Sigma FORTRAN-IV masked some dangers with a GLOBAL
statement (working from memory, the statement keyword may have been
different) -- basically
GLOBAL X, Y, Z
expanded into
COMMON /X/ X
COMMON /Y/ Y
COMMON /Z/ Z
IE; each named variable became part of a named common block with the
same name. No chance of implicitly equivalencing variables when a common
block was used with different data types.
--
Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN
wlfraed@ix.netcom.com HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2013-05-30 23:09 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 55+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2013-05-29 13:36 Gnat 2013 is out! J-P. Rosen
2013-05-29 15:03 ` Simon Wright
2013-05-29 16:13 ` Simon Wright
2013-05-29 22:39 ` Randy Brukardt
2013-05-30 2:01 ` Adam Beneschan
2013-05-30 8:01 ` Bill Findlay
2013-05-30 23:09 ` Dennis Lee Bieber [this message]
2013-05-31 5:02 ` J-P. Rosen
2013-05-31 18:35 ` Bill Findlay
2013-05-30 10:39 ` Simon Wright
2013-05-30 16:21 ` Adam Beneschan
2013-05-30 19:53 ` Randy Brukardt
2013-05-31 7:41 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2013-05-31 11:30 ` Stefan.Lucks
2013-05-31 12:03 ` Niklas Holsti
2013-05-31 22:07 ` Randy Brukardt
2013-06-01 11:51 ` Georg Bauhaus
2013-06-03 14:52 ` Adam Beneschan
2013-06-04 17:42 ` Wesley Pan
2013-06-04 18:34 ` Adam Beneschan
2013-06-04 19:00 ` Wesley Pan
2013-06-05 15:40 ` Eryndlia Mavourneen
2013-06-11 2:39 ` Randy Brukardt
2013-06-11 6:31 ` Georg Bauhaus
2013-06-19 21:57 ` Randy Brukardt
2013-05-30 0:31 ` Dennis Lee Bieber
2013-05-31 16:12 ` dptrash
2013-06-01 5:10 ` Stephen Leake
2013-06-01 6:00 ` Per Sandberg
2013-06-01 6:46 ` J-P. Rosen
2013-06-01 15:22 ` Bill Findlay
2013-08-27 14:08 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)
2013-08-27 20:05 ` wilson
2013-08-27 22:59 ` Dennis Lee Bieber
2013-08-28 7:35 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2013-08-28 23:39 ` Dennis Lee Bieber
2013-06-07 2:41 ` gautier_niouzes
2013-06-07 15:52 ` mjsilva
2013-06-07 20:15 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2013-06-09 18:51 ` MatthiasR
2013-06-08 6:22 ` Simon Wright
2013-06-08 23:23 ` mjsilva
2013-06-10 11:07 ` Rego, P.
2013-06-13 13:30 ` Rego, P.
2013-06-17 6:35 ` Jacob Sparre Andersen
2013-06-22 8:17 ` MatthiasR
2014-03-18 0:04 ` Rego, P.
2013-06-11 7:52 ` Maciej Sobczak
2013-06-11 9:35 ` J-P. Rosen
2013-06-11 12:09 ` John Doe
2013-06-12 7:58 ` Maciej Sobczak
2013-06-12 11:01 ` G.B.
2013-06-12 20:01 ` Robert A Duff
2013-06-12 20:36 ` Georg Bauhaus
2013-06-13 7:38 ` Maciej Sobczak
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