> On Mar 19, 2017, at 2:36 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
> wrote:
>
> ...
> Still, vendors kept extending their FORTRAN IVs. I think I remarked on
> a CDC syntactic extension that resulted in the ability to write an
> ambiguous statement, with no clear way to resolve the meaning.
I'm reminded of a T-shirt sold while I was in college (mid 1970s) with this
text:
(.)(.)
IKF4084I
I looked that up in Messages and Codes, found a pointer to the IBM COBOL
messages manual, where I found this message text: "Questionable use of
parentheses accepted with doubts as to meaning". So I think CDC was not alone
in that bad practice.
paul
