From: Danny@hyperspace.vogon.gov   
      
   Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:   
   > On Thu, 3 Oct 2024 14:34:01 -0500, Lynn McGuire wrote:   
   >   
   >> My code used to assign Hollerith to Real numbers but I ripped that out   
   >> years ago in a project to get rid of Hollerith.   
   >   
   > Fortran was the first programming language I learned (from the Anna Burke   
   > Harris book). The only kind of string literals I can remember in that   
   > first learning were Hollerith literals. I liked the fact that they were   
   > unambiguous: because length was explicit up front, you could any   
   > characters you liked in them.   
   >   
   > Later I discovered that “normal” people preferred explicitly-delimited   
   > string literals.   
   >   
      
   Assuming 4 bytes to a word, I find   
          integer txthdr (7) /4hText, 4h hea, 4hder,, 4h wit, 4hh a ,   
   4hcomm, 4ha    /   
   uglier than   
          integer txthdr (7) /'Text', ' hea', 'der,', ' wit', 'h a ',   
   'comm', 'a   ' /   
   but not as friendly as   
          character*28 txthdr /'Text header, with a comma   ' /   
      
   As to making all variables containing strings integer back before   
   Fortran 77, that was an insurance policy to prevent disasters such as:   
          integer init4 / 4hinit /   
          real text4   
   c   
   c       snip   
   c   
          text4 = init4   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)