On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 09:48 -0700, Les wrote: > On my punch cards they did. Every card had a number sequential to the > sequence. The punch we used inserted them automatically. Well, the > programming card did. The reference number used for calls may have been > different, but I don't remember it. Those weren't line numbers per se (in the sense that BASIC had line numbers, for example). In FORTRAN, an 80-column card was divided into fields: Column 1: 'C' indicated a comment line, ' ' a code line. Column 2-6: Statement label numbers. These were arbitrary numbers used as targets for FORMAT, GOTO and "computed GOTO" (now *that* was a flow control concept!), and DO statements. These did not have to obey any ordering rules. There was no concept of an if-else block or a while loop with a logical test, so flow control was handled by GOTOs of some variety. Targeted statements were usually CONTINUE statements (no-ops), because there was some ambiguity regarding when the targeted statement was actually executed, and because it made reorganizing the flow a bit easier (especially with punchcards[1]). Column 7-72: Code. Column 73-80: Ignored. Intended to be used for sequence numbers so you could sort the cards down in order if somebody dropped the deck. The numbers could be anything really, for example a three-letter alpha code identifying the deck and a four-digit sequence number. (Somebody is bound to correct me on the actual column numbers, now...) Aside: In the early FORTRANs, the body of a loop was always executed once, even though the test was at the top of the loop. So you needed a guard if you wanted to avoid making any passes through the loop at all. That changed with FORTRAN 77. [1] Of course, you'd want to re-sequence cards at some point if you reordered them. > > Our programs were HUGE, multiple trays. Each tray was denoted by the > color of the diagonal line. We had 8 colors, so I guess we never had > more than 8 trays, because I don't remember pairs of lines anywhere. > > Regards, > Les H > On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 11:27 -0500, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote: > > Les wrote: > > > On Tue, 2008-04-01 at 20:36 -0700, Richard England wrote: > > >> Try dropping two trays , each about 2.5 feet long. They did that to me > > >> in the data center when I was in grad school. Luckily I had just > > >> printed they contents out and resequenced them. The manager of the data > > >> center had a cow when I told the staff to put the deck back together, > > >> but my advisor (bless him) stood behind me and insisted that if they had > > >> taken due care it wouldn't have happened. > > >> > > >> Ah cards, loved 'em (not). And drum cards. Boy there was an arcane art! > > >> > > >> ~~R > > >> > > > Did you have the diagonal line drawn on the top to help? > > > > > > If they were Fortran, or COBOL, you could always sort on the line > > > number. I don't remember the other languages having line numbers. > > > > > > Regards, > > > Les H > > > > > Are you sure about Fortran and COBOL having line numbers? I didn't > > use COBOL enough to remember any more, but I remember only using > > line numbers or labels in FORTRAN if they were the target of a > > branching instruction. > > > > Mikkel > > -- > > fedora-list mailing list > > fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx > > To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list > > -- Matthew Saltzman Clemson University Math Sciences mjs AT clemson DOT edu http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs
