Hi, Bill.

BG> andrew, at 11:00 on Aug 05 1995, you wrote to Bill Grimsley...

BG> ac> Yep, Pascal doesn't care which column the code starts at.  This is also
BG> the
BG> ac> case with C, REXX, and Visual Basic.  COBOL is apparently quite fussy i

BG> ac> regards to source code formatting requirements.

COBOL requires Division, section and paragraph names to start in columns
8..11, and statements in column 12 or west. Column 7 is used to indicate
the continuation of a string literal (-), a comment (*) although that
wasn't part of the standard in old COBOL, maybe now, or in some
compilers a compiler option specification ($)

BG> Is COBOL relevant on Intel-based PCs though?  Or FORTRAN?

Yes, I have compilers for both. PCs are often used to develop, even
initially test COBOL programs which will end up on the corporate
mainframe.

A *lot* of scientific stuff is in Fortran, it's useful to be able to run
it on a PC without rewriting.

Regards, FIM.

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