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From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: The joy of FORTRAN
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2024 21:47:07 -0000 (UTC)
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On 30 Sep 2024 19:53:49 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> I've worked with interfaces where the data fields are determined by the
> character position in the string with spaces used to pad fields. It was
> fun explaining to the support people configuring the queries that what
> appeared to be an empty field had to be exactly 5 spaces or the whole
> thing would be thrown off.

Leftovers from the punch-card era, perhaps?

I would wrap that in some kind of more user-friendly frontend, that would 
accept more forgiving input, and properly pack it into the necessary 
fixed-length fields for the backend.