Bam-bam-bam-bam. Sorry can hear you over all the whitespace I have to type.

Every editor worth its salt does this for you. Maybe try upgrading from ed.

"This is a good decision because we've forced every editor to handle this good decision well."

If only there was a way not to have to rely on editors all behaving the same with leading spaces. Oh wait, there is a way: indent with tabs.

I also prefer tabs. I'm just saying that "I have to wear out my spacebar" is not a good argument.

Yeah, indenting with spaces wastes so many punch cards! Oh, wait.

Actually, a punch card used to represent a single line.

But you'd be wasting holes.

Not that I've ever used one, but I wouldn't expect someone to indent any code on a punch card.

I just felt the comment was suiting since it must have been about when they were still used that you couldn't automate indentation.

In FORTRAN 77, it'a syntax error to put a statement before column 7

Interesting! Can you explain why that is the case? Were the first 6 characters reserved for the line number or goto marks?

Yes. Columns 1 to 5 are for labels. Column 6, if it has any character there (usually "$"), marks a continuation from the previous line.

I think the column 6 rule and line continuations were removed for FORTRAN 95.