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From: Gary Scott <garylscott@sbcglobal.net>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Feed control
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2024 20:55:11 -0500
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On 4/4/2024 12:09 PM, R Daneel Olivaw wrote:
> Gary Scott wrote:
>> On 4/4/2024 8:52 AM, Dr. What wrote:
>>> -=> Gary Scott wrote to All <=-
>>>
>>>   GS> On 4/3/2024 7:43 AM, db wrote:
>>>   > When I learned Fortran many years ago, the first
>>>   > character in a line to be printed (or later,
>>>   > displayed) controlled line or page feed. A blank
>>>   > produced a new line, a "1" a new page. We used these
>>>   > to control what happened.
>>>   >
>>>   > These days, this doesn't seem to be the case, so
>>>   > in a sense, Fortran is no longer backward
>>>   > compatible in this one sense. Or is it?
>>>   >
>>>
>>>   GS> This was always, and remains device dependent.
>>>
>>> That's not completely true.
>>>
>>> Using MS-FORTRAN on my vintage computers, I always have to start my
>>> FORMATs
>>> with "1X".  If I fail to do that, the output, even to the screen, chops
>>> off
>>> that first character.
>>
>> Hmmm.  I'd say that's precisely what "device dependent" means.  
>> Although some behavior in MS Fortran was just bugs.
>>>
>>>
>>> ... Epitaph on a gravestone: Cheerio, see you soon.
>>> ___ MultiMail/Linux v0.52
>>>
>>
> 
> Not at all, the 1X means that the line-feed character is a space.  A "+" 
> there would probably overlay whatever had previously been printed to 
> that line with something new.
> I have used several different compilers on several different 
> architectures over the years (the newest adhered to the F77 standard) 
> and the meaning of the first character on a line was common to all of them.

There were very many different devices that had different meanings for 
various control characters.  There were also devices based on EBCDIC 
with completely different character "values" used to achieve a similar 
effect.  There were also many devices that required multi-character 
(/binary) control sequences.  Just because there was a frequent 
convention on Windows or Linux doesn't mean it was universal.