Unstructured data

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Other languages with such features have to write endless pages of guidance and warnings for people to avoid such patterns (See here and here for examples). Fortran appears to prevent it altogether if the potential damages outweigh the benefits. And that’s what makes Fortran fast, with no hassles and no warnings manual. Over the years, I have seen many (frequently unfair and unjustified) criticisms of the Fortran language. Still, almost every time I dug into the issues further, I realized the standard committee had excellent reasons to design things the way they are. That does not mean everything is perfect. In particular, the patchy and selective style of enhancements to the language, which FortranFan also mentioned earlier, is, has been, and will remain quite detrimental to the language. That’s my opinion as a frequent user, from the user perspective.