Do Not Use Columns 73-80 in Your Source File


If you encounter problems with unmatched parentheses or quotation marks or illegal continuation characters, the problem may be that you are not adhering to the Fortran conventions for column format. You need to be careful about which columns contain which characters. If you violate the rules for column format you can get obscure errors. Here is a summary of the format:
  Column		Contents
  --------	---------------------------------------------
  1		'C' (indicating a Comment) or the first digit
  		of a statement number.
  
  2 to 5	Remaining digits of a statement number.
  
  6		Non-blank character indicates a continuation
  		of the previous line.
  
  7 to 72	Program statements.

  73 to 80	Must be blank!