Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder8.news.weretis.net!newsfeed.bofh.team!paganini.bofh.team!not-for-mail
From: R Daneel Olivaw <Danny@hyperspace.vogon.gov>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Is there a way in Fortran to designate an integer value as
 integer*8 ?
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2024 12:13:52 +0200
Organization: To protect and to server
Message-ID: <vdof50$1jtk1$1@paganini.bofh.team>
References: <vdict2$339ak$1@dont-email.me> <vdm3lb$1b8pr$1@paganini.bofh.team>
 <vdmbvt$3p2dv$2@dont-email.me> <vdmimv$1c18c$1@paganini.bofh.team>
 <vdmrj9$3rih7$3@dont-email.me> <vdn4i2$3ssv4$8@dont-email.me>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Injection-Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2024 10:13:52 -0000 (UTC)
Injection-Info: paganini.bofh.team; logging-data="1701505"; posting-host="XBJBjenliTep7OIZ0g9xdw.user.paganini.bofh.team"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@bofh.team"; posting-account="9dIQLXBM7WM9KzA+yjdR4A";
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101
 SeaMonkey/2.53.18.2
X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.3
Bytes: 2355
Lines: 32

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