From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: peter at rulingia.com (Peter Jeremy) Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2020 19:31:56 +1100 Subject: [COFF] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature In-Reply-To: References: <20201106014109.GP26296@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20201111083156.GA57519@server.rulingia.com> On 2020-Nov-06 10:07:21 -0500, Clem Cole wrote: >Will, I do still the same thing, but the reason for 72 for email being that >way is still card-based. In FORTRAN the first column defines if the card >is new (a blank), a comment (a capital C), no zero a 'continuation' of the >last card. But column 73-80 were 'special' and used to store sequence #s >(this was handy when you dropped your card deck, card sorters could put it >back into canonical order). Since no-one has mentioned it, the reason why Fortran and Cobol ignore columns 73-80 goes back to the IBM 711 card reader - which could read any (but usually configured for the first) 72 columns into pairs of 36-bit words in an IBM 701. -- Peter Jeremy -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 963 bytes Desc: not available URL: