Hi,
"Eric Smith" <eric_at_brouhaha.com> said:
> Adrian Vickers wrote:
> > Gosh, I had /no/ idea that Fortran was a "column-sensitive" programming
> > language; I thought that COBOL was the only one...
>
> Um, COBOL isn't. It's free-form. Groups of COBOL statements are
> called paragraphs, and in the early days were written just like paragraphs
> of prose. Fortunately sanity eventually prevailed, and COBOL has for
> many years now been mostly written with one statement per line (or less).
>
> > What other languages are column sensitive? I'd guess at APL, but I'm
> > sure there are others.
>
> No, no column sensitivity in APL.
>
> RPG is *very* column sensitive, much more so than FORTRAN.
>
> Python is sort of column sensitive. Nothing has to be in a specific
> column, but the nesting is controlled by matching indentation, rather
> than having begin/end tokens.
>
ISTR CESIL as being column sensitive, and some early BASICs required
the keyword (only one per statement) to begin in column 6.
I used to occasionally use NCC Filetab which reqired some things to
be in the correct column.
--
Cheers,
Stan Barr stanb_at_dial.pipex.com
The future was never like this!
Received on Fri Feb 28 2003 - 13:39:25 GMT