Re: [pure-lang-users] gedit pure.lang

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

Eddie Rucker wrote:
> I could not find anything about the history of leaving off the leading 0 but it would make sense for FORTRAN programmers to do that 
> with punch cards.

John may have a point there, but I've frequently seen seen it in 
handwriting by US people, too. It might also have something to do with 
the development of electronic calculators (although Fortran was 
earlier). But maybe there was some "prior art" which got picked up in 
the design of Fortran, too? I couldn't find anything definite on the web 
either, strange. Maybe we should ask someone from the Computer History 
Museum...

Another related bit of trivia is that the Algol 60 design process nearly 
stalled at some point because of the fierce debate over the decimal 
separator. So flamewars over lexical issues have a really long tradition 
in computer science. ;-)

Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag