[fitsbits] reopening of Public Comment Period on the CONTINUE convention

Tom McGlynn (NASA/GSFC Code 660.1) tom.mcglynn at nasa.gov
Thu Mar 10 11:20:57 EST 2016


Two further nits...

I am unclear of the legality of the use of CONTINUE keywords in a
     CONTINUE = '&'  / A continuation character.
context.
The new convention is described before the general constraint in 4.4.2 
reserving the use of the keywords defined later in the
standard, but they are mentioned afterwards, so I think that status of 
other uses of CONTINUE is a bit hazy.  [The use of
CONTINUE as a comment style keyword is explicitly allowed though.]

If someone has used CONTINUE as a keyword, have their files become illegal?
I don't actually care what the answer to this is, but I think it should 
be clarified either way.


The other nit is the new final sentence in 4.2.1.1 is puzzling.
I.e., what does
   In general, no length limit less than 68 is implied for
   character-valued keywords.
mean?  We'd just made it clear that single record character string values
can be up to 68 characters.  I don't know that the this following 
sentence  does any harm, but I can't see what
work it is doing and it may confuse others beyond me.  In fact, there is 
no length limit whatsover on string values now.

     Tom



     Tom



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