WATFOR-77 documentation?

Help
1

I’m playing around with the old WATFOR-77 v.2.0 compiler for DOS.There is not much documentation available on the web, and I do not have the official manuals. I’m trying to compile the included examples, like the Black Jack game in BLACKJAC.FOR, but it fails:

> watfor77 /exe blackjac.for
*ERR* VA-04 SUBROUTINE INTR has not been defined

I guess the routine INTR() is declared in WATFOR.LIB. Unfortunately, I’ve no clue how to link the library. I’ve set the environment variable SET LIBRARY=C:\WATFOR77 as somewhere is written that the compiler looks up the path, but without any effect.

Has anyone worked with WATFOR-77 in the past and can help out?

Edit: Friendly Russians helped out. The correct environment variable is LIBRARY=C:\WATFOR77\WATFOR, i. e., the name of the library (without file extension) has to be included.

2

You could try contacting the user “hhickman” on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hhickman/status/1380626972003418120. He has an old WATFOR textbook.

3

I got it running with trial and error. WATFOR-77 1.4 and 2.0 are not very useful, as support for & line-break indicators was first added in 3.0. Futhermore, the compiler has to be specifically configured to be directly callable from command-line. By default, the compiler starts a built-in editor. But yeah, it’s fun.