From: garylscott@sbcglobal.net   
      
   On 1/26/2024 2:50 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:   
   > On Thu, 25 Jan 2024 15:31:51 -0600, Lynn McGuire wrote:   
   >   
   >> Much Fortran code was written under the F66 rules until the late 1980s   
   >> if you supported multiple platforms (we supported ten platforms in the   
   >> 1980s).   
   >   
   > Why did it take vendors so long to catch up to FORTRAN 77?   
   >   
   > By the way, I thought the limit on identifier length had been lifted in   
   > FORTRAN 77, but I was wrong: it took until Fortran 90 to raise the limit   
   > to 31.   
   >   
   >> You can update it to longer names at your own peril.   
   >   
   > Why is that still the case? Longer names have been allowed for going back   
   > about a third of a century now.   
   Harris VOS Fortran (~1980) had a lot of extensions beyond F77 that   
   eventually went into F90 (long procedure/variable names (63 chars), free   
   form source, full complement of end statements, async IO (although a   
   different form), "Purdue" bit intrinsics (1753), and many others).  They   
   were way ahead of the standard, but there's always risk in adding   
   extensions.  These were however essential to make the systems usable for   
   real-time programming (in addition to program priority control, process   
   initiation/termination, hardware interrupt handling/processing, shared   
   memory access and control, etc.)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)