J3/03-152r2

Date:      2003 Mar 31
To:        J3
From:      Dan Nagle
Subject:   Trailing comments

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Summary
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One of the more irritating historical oddities of Fortran has been the
way that leading comments are ignored but trailing ones are an error,
especially since blank lines have been deemed comments (and these are
often introduced by editors).  Almost all compilers ignore them
nowadays, and it would be nice if the standard was updated to reflect
this near-universal practice after 25 years!

This is clearly the least of small issues, but so is the fix.

OK, so we'll fix it.

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Edits
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_____________
28:7
Append after 'unit':
"or may follow the last statement of a program unit"
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29:24
Append after 'unit':
"or may follow the last statement of a program unit"