Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!purdue!haven!umbc3!mbph!hybl
From: hybl@mbph.UUCP (Albert Hybl  Dept of Biophysics  SM)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: ENCODE and DECODE ...
Summary: Extensions are barnacles that impede portability
Message-ID: <604@mbph.UUCP>
Date: 15 Aug 89 14:05:36 GMT
References: <1989Aug10.220842.18863@bpdsun1.uucp> <1989Aug11.162714.25029@agate.berkeley.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Maryland, School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21201
Lines: 31

In message <1989Aug11.162714.25029@agate.berkeley.edu>
from forags@violet.berkeley.edu, Al Stangenberger writes:

>ENCODE is like a Fortran-77 "internal write" (formatted write
>to memory) statement.  Its syntax was:
                                   ^^^
>
>         ENCODE (nchr, fmt, address) iolist
>
>where nchr is the number of characters to write, fmt a Fortran
>format number, and address is the name of the variable in which
>you want to store the result.

Unfortunately, the verb "was" is still "is."  ENCODE and DECODE
are, as Al implies, antiquated statements that were useful in
their time but are now barnacles that impede portability.  Rather
than scraping them from the language, many implementations offer
them as "extensions."  The neologism has reversed the meaning
of the word!
 
BTW, the ENCODE/DECODE statements were also implemented with syntax:
                                  ^^^^
          ENCODE (fmt, nchr, address) iolist

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