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Alberto Fasso' writes: > On Sat, 6 Mar 1999, Richard Maine wrote: > > > The compiler is allowed a lot of freedom in line splitting > > with list-directed output. Some compilers might write it all on one > > line, but this certainly isn't required. > > Right. But personally I find it a very bad thing. Portability in > my opinion means also that you should get the same results on > any platform. I had to struggle with a number of programs > I had to port from VAX to UNIX, and where all output, originally > nice and friendly, had become an unreadable mess. It took me a lot of time > to convert hundreds of list-directed WRITE statements to formatted. ... > I would like to stress that often one writes programs (or scripts) > which have as input the output of other programs: but this is very > difficult when output changes from platform to platform. Yes, this can often be an issue. Where portability of exact format is important, don't use list-directed formatting. Its nice for quick and easy debugging output or other things where you care more about simplicity than precise control. (By the way, list-directed output is formatted). -- Richard Maine [log in to unmask] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%