[ch] early FORTRAN compiler anecdote

[Perry E. Metzger]

David Furcy <furcyd at uwosh.edu> writes:
> I recently joined this list and have not seen any traffic
> yet... I'll try this anyway.
> Someone mentioned to me the other day a story about how an early
> FORTRAN compiler was used to compile a program that was executed on
> a space probe with dire consequences due to ambiguities at the lexer
> level in a "do loop" (the anecdote went like this: "you see, back
> then white space was not used as a token separator, etc.) Obviously,
> I am short on details here. Can anybody help me fill them in with
> some good references? thanks in advance,

The archives of the RISKS mailing list are always a good place to look
for such lore.

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/9.54.html#subj1

.pm