Redefining a numeric constant in Fortran (Was Re: why are some types immutable?)

beliavsky_at_aol.com
Date: 01/17/05 

Date: 16 Jan 2005 18:14:44 -0800

Roy Smith wrote (in comp.lang.python):

>Believe it or not, in some early versions of Fortran, numbers were not

>immutable! I forget the exact scenario, but if you did something like:

> subroutine munge (i)
> i = 3
> return

>and then in your main program did:

> j = 7
> call munge (7)
> write (6, 11) j
> 11 format ('j = ', i6)

>it would print 3! The problem is that numerical constants were
interned
>(i.e. in the main program, there was only a single 7 stored in memory,

>and both uses of 7 referred to the same memory location), and the
value
>passed to the subroutine was call by reference. It was almost as if
the
>compiler let you say "7 = 3" as an assignment statement.

>Needless to say, people did indeed complain massively.

Was this (the ability to redefine the value of '7') ever really true of
Fortran, or a particular Fortran compilers?