[COFF] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature

[Peter Jeremy]

On 2020-Nov-06 10:07:21 -0500, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>Will, I do still the same thing, but the reason for 72 for email being that
>way is still card-based.  In FORTRAN the first column defines if the card
>is new (a blank), a comment (a capital C), no zero a 'continuation' of the
>last card.  But column 73-80 were 'special' and used to store sequence #s
>(this was handy when you dropped your card deck, card sorters could put it
>back into canonical order).

Since no-one has mentioned it, the reason why Fortran and Cobol ignore
columns 73-80 goes back to the IBM 711 card reader - which could read any
(but usually configured for the first) 72 columns into pairs of 36-bit words
in an IBM 701.

-- 
Peter Jeremy
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