I wrote:
> IIRC the numbers did not have to be sequential. That is, you could use 10
> 20 30 ... and then replace 20 with 15, 20, and 25 when you made a change.
> The card sorter just put the cards in ascending order.

Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
> Isn't that where line numbers came from? Since each line would have
> corresponded to a card? I know that Fortran didn't have every single
> line numbered (only for e.g. gotos), but I'm assuming that this is where
> BASIC got the idea.

The sequence numbers were punched in columns 73-80, which FORTRAN did not
use.

--
John Hasler


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