[J3] [EXTERNAL] Re: Question involving explicit initialization

[Van Snyder]

On Sat, 2019-05-04 at 20:51 -0400, Steve Lionel via J3 wrote:
> To follow on to Malcolm's comment, this rule disallows a usage I have 
> seen a lot over the years where a COMMON block is defined by an
> INCLUDE 
> file along with DATA statements initializing the COMMON variables.
> When 
> this is INCLUDEd into more than one program unit, the rule is
> violated. 

A technique that was used in the 1960's, at least on the IBM 7094, that
violated the spec for IBM FORTRAN IV, which pretty much became FORTRAN
66, was to re-initialize common variables using block data in different
overlays.  That was a disaster for portability.  Worked fine on the '94;
didn't work on the Univac 1108.