> I thought that the reason brackets [] and braces {} were not part of the
> Fortran character set was out of consideration for users of non-English
> keyboards, where these keys tend to be replaced by letters with accents.
This was probably a reason in the old days, and also a reason why some
other characters, like *, are overused.
> On the other hand continental users of C and other languages where
> brackets/braces are unavoidable seem to manage, so maybe this is no longer
> an issue? Any comments from the continent?
These are generally available somewhere on the keyboard, usually through
a second shift-type key as a third option for some number keys. (This
is a bit slower, though, so I prefer a "north American" keyboard.)
(Coincidentally, Monday I had to log in from a Macintosh to my VMS
machine to do some email. I was amazed that the numeric keypad
functioned as the EDT keypad, but I couldn't find [] or @ anywhere!
Fortunately, <> can be substituted for [] in VMS directory names!)
> My own feeling is that if [] were to be allowed in Fortran, the best use
> for them would be around array subscripts, making it much easier to
> distinguish array references from function calls.
Right. But note that this seems a bit of a waste, as it provides no
additional functionality.
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