From: garylscott@sbcglobal.net   
      
   On 2/5/2024 9:04 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:   
   > Fortran (in free-form mode) is now the third language I’ve come across   
   > that allows semicolons to terminate statements, but makes them   
   > optional (letting a newline do the job instead).   
   >   
      
   SNIP   
      
   > Free-form Fortran, on the other hand, requires an explicit “&” to   
   > continue a line in all cases:   
   >   
   >      character(len = 9), dimension(3, 4), parameter :: month_names = &   
   >          reshape &   
   >            ( &   
   >              (/ ' January ', ' February', '  March  ', '  April  ', &   
   >              '    May  ', '   June  ', '   July  ', '  August ', &   
   >              'September', ' October ', ' November', ' December' /), &   
   >              (/3, 4/) &   
   >            )   
   >   
   > Wouldn’t it be useful if it had a smarter, Python-style rule?   
      
   I'm not a fan of this style myself, I would probably alter this to be a   
   little less verbose and to use longer line lengths.  Unfortunately, my   
   posting setting don't allow long line lengths (easily) for posting here.   
     So I'd probably use longer lengths than below resulting in only 2   
   lines.  I definitely hate breaking out parentheses on separate lines.   
   These are argument/parameter/initializer groupings, not code block   
   separators.   
      
   character(9), parameter :: month_names(3,4) = reshape((/'January', &   
     ' February', '  March  ', '  April  ', '    May  ','   June  ',   &   
     '   July  ', '  August ', 'September', ' October ', ' November',  &   
     ' December' /), (/3, 4/))   
      
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