Technical feedback re F77 and gfortran manual...

[Russell Nathan Hyer]

Hi,

First off thanks for the (in the main) great toolset.

Second, recently, I started going backwards in time to learn and use 77 in my test projects. One of the many aspects involved in this set of mini projects is visualizing the data, so naturally like crashing a computer, the next thing to come was a micro web app. So, I noted with interest your documentation and starting point at:

https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gfortran/GETENV.html

Though, as someone who reads, writes and breaks and tests his own software, I found that basing my code around this whilst pragmatically correct (ie: gfortran will accept it with no quibbles) it's not actually fortran 77 code at all. And it's basically F or a subset of F95 for the style it uses. I mean, double quotes plus single quotes. Etc. etc.

Problematically, I had submitted a couple of emails into nber.org (at the point where I hadn't quite realised my error) so my email has been published. Though, I've just sent through a correction, so maybe that'll get published.

In the interim, please find attached to this email a 77 programme that does what you outline in the documentation as quoted above, but in 77 style.

Thanks,

Russell

[Russell Nathan Hyer]

Hi again,

I forgot to give the reference to the nber.org location where my original set of emails got itself accidentally published:

https://www.nber.org/sys-admin/fortran-cgi/environment.txt

This is also behind my switching to QUERY_STRING from HOME as it's a slightly more useful example. For fun and for work, I once wrote a really bad implementation of QUERY_STRING in php that did all kinds of searching backwards and forwards, etc. So, a neat starting point like this might also improve the GNU documentation.

Thanks

Russell

Post by Russell Nathan Hyer
Hi,
First off thanks for the (in the main) great toolset.
https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gfortran/GETENV.html
Though, as someone who reads, writes and breaks and tests his own software, I found that basing my code around this whilst pragmatically correct (ie: gfortran will accept it with no quibbles) it's not actually fortran 77 code at all. And it's basically F or a subset of F95 for the style it uses. I mean, double quotes plus single quotes. Etc. etc.
Problematically, I had submitted a couple of emails into nber.org (at the point where I hadn't quite realised my error) so my email has been published. Though, I've just sent through a correction, so maybe that'll get published.
In the interim, please find attached to this email a 77 programme that does what you outline in the documentation as quoted above, but in 77 style.
Thanks,
Russell

[Janne Blomqvist]

On Wed, Aug 1, 2018 at 6:43 PM, Russell Nathan Hyer <

Post by Russell Nathan Hyer
Hi,
First off thanks for the (in the main) great toolset.
Second, recently, I started going backwards in time to learn and use 77 in
my test projects. One of the many aspects involved in this set of mini
projects is visualizing the data, so naturally like crashing a computer,
the next thing to come was a micro web app. So, I noted with interest your
https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gfortran/GETENV.html
Though, as someone who reads, writes and breaks and tests his own
software, I found that basing my code around this whilst pragmatically
correct (ie: gfortran will accept it with no quibbles) it's not actually
fortran 77 code at all. And it's basically F or a subset of F95 for the
style it uses. I mean, double quotes plus single quotes. Etc. etc.
Problematically, I had submitted a couple of emails into nber.org (at the
point where I hadn't quite realised my error) so my email has been
published. Though, I've just sent through a correction, so maybe that'll
get published.
In the interim, please find attached to this email a 77 programme that
does what you outline in the documentation as quoted above, but in 77 style.

Thanks you for taking an interest in GFortran. However, GFortran does not
limit itself to being a Fortran 77 compiler, our contributors have worked
hard to add support for the latest Fortran standards. The code examples in
the documentation, in general, try to (roughly and imperfectly, but still)
follow best practices for "modern Fortran" coding. Including, in
particular, using mostly free source form as opposed to fixed form (which
was the only source form in F77). If you're looking for a Fortran 77
museum, you've come to the wrong place, I'm sorry to say.