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On Mon, Sep 15 2014, Alan McKinnon wrote: |
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> My favourite Fortran story: |
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> |
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> One of the Mariner spacecraft yonks ago was sent a routine regular |
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> course correction. It flew off at some wild angle and was never seen |
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> again, and because the antenna was pointing in the wrong direction comms |
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> could not be re-established. Oops. Expensive spacecraft down the drain.... |
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> |
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> The bug was eventually trace to a comma instead of a period in some |
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> Fortran code (made a huge difference). Note that many code reviews |
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> missed the bug, and the compiler accepted it as valid syntax |
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Perhaps instead of |
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Do 15 i=1,10 |
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a loop from 1 to 10 |
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we had |
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Do 15 i=1.10 |
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which is the same in fortran as |
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do15i = 1.0 |
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an assignment statement. |
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allan |
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