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Fortran ignoramus here... is this true?: "...Fortran doesn't have a structured IF, REPEAT ... UNTIL, or CASE statement..." How the heck did anyone loop until a condition was met?

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Structured if implies block structure; Fortran had a single-statement if (with ambiguous lexing to boot). That single statement could be a goto.

so... you'd have to write a series of ifs and single-statement gotos every time?

Yep. I ran into Fortrash IV in college after doing '77 earlier. No "else" statement in IV.

IF NOT <<condition>> GOTO <<start of else>>

<<do iffy stuff>>

GOTO <<end-if>>

<<label for else>>

<<do elsey stuff>>

<<label for end-if>>

Barbarism at its finest :-)

Which is the main reason why Kernighan created Ratfor... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratfor)

Yes. Welcome to the "good old days" of programming :)

My programmable calculator worked just like that, where the only flow control was in the form of goto. Seeing C for the first time was such a revelation. I remember being so excited to see all these things like for, while, etc. and it was immediately obvious just how much better they were.

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