Path: csiph.com!usenet.pasdenom.info!weretis.net!feeder4.news.weretis.net!news.musoftware.de!wum.musoftware.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: blmblm@myrealbox.com Newsgroups: comp.programming Subject: Re: commas Date: 6 Jul 2012 19:01:29 GMT Organization: None Lines: 59 Message-ID: References: <4fdeb0e5$0$17207$892e0abb@auth.newsreader.octanews.com> <97dtt756jsdcgrjiufo8jlpb9e51djufdv@4ax.com> X-Trace: individual.net kI2c1/Gpg7CKCZYVFPQAUQdpZnEKIVJlfTgLUWjm7w/Vno21GuQIYC7wRB75joyLbb X-Orig-Path: not-for-mail Cancel-Lock: sha1:OdFvR8BZyEWSMjWYHwU3Jy/zxv8= X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test76 (Apr 2, 2001) Xref: csiph.com comp.programming:1909 In article <97dtt756jsdcgrjiufo8jlpb9e51djufdv@4ax.com>, Robert Wessel wrote: > On Sun, 17 Jun 2012 22:38:47 -0600, Thad Smith > wrote: > > >On 6/12/2012 8:09 AM, bob wrote: > >> Are there any languages where you can actually use commas in the numbers? > >> > >> So, instead of having to write: > >> > >> int x = 5000000; > >> > >> You could write: > >> > >> int x = 5,000,000; > >> > >> I think this could improve clarity a lot. > > > >I haven't used Fortran in decades, but my recollection is it allowed arbitrary > >spaces to be embedded in source. If that is still the case, you could write > > x = 5 000 000 Quite belatedly, for the record maybe .... That was true of old-style FORTRAN (standards up through FORTRAN 77). Fortran 90 [*] introduced an alternate source format ("free form", as opposed to the older "fixed form") with a lot fewer restrictions on column alignment and so forth, and in this new format spaces *are* significant. In the new format the mistake described below wouldn't be possible -- though neither would the above trick for making numeric constants more readable. The compilers I've used support both formats, with the choice determined by either the filename extension or a compiler switch. (Backward compability, you know.) Fortran these days -- if one can judge by comp.lang.fortran, it continues to evolve and to have an active and enthusiastic user base, but it's something of a niche language. [*] Yeah, they also decided to drop the all-caps spelling. > > Indeed, mistyping: > > DO 100 I = 1, 10 > > with a period instead of a comma, would result in: > > DO100I = 1.10 > > Which, of course, doesn't loop as intended, implicitly declares a > variable called DO100I and assigns a value to it, and would typically > not produce any sort of diagnostic. And when you're debugging a paper > listing, printed on low quality paper with a cheap, almost worn out, > ribbon, that was not easy to spot. > -- B. L. Massingill ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.