[RFC][PATCH] -d_lines

[Craig Powers]

Steve Kargl wrote:
> (2) I've never seen this convention in the 20 years that I've
>     been reading and writing Fortran code.  It looks like a
>     cute trick to avoid the use of a preprocessor (cpp, fpp,
>     or sed).   IMHO, this type of option does not belong in
>     gfortran, but I guess I'll accept it if the majority of
>     users want it.

I've used a compiler with the feature.  I think it was the Lahey LF77/EM32
compiler, but it could have been DVF5.  Unfortunately, I left the company a
year ago, so I can't confirm with the documentation, or confirm my
recollection of what the feature did.  The way I remember it, was something
in fixed form that would optionally comment out a line, depending on a
compiler switch; it was a convenient way to generate debug code that I would
do using a #ifdef block in C or C++.  I imagine there was not a preprocessor
available for the compiler.  I don't recall how the 'D' affected the column
lineup.