why i

[Steve Holden]

Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:

> On 25 May 2004 16:35:29 +0950, Ben Finney
> <bignose-hates-spam at and-benfinney-does-too.id.au> declaimed the
> following in comp.lang.python:
> 
> 
>>The usage of "i" was promulgated by the FORTRAN language, which allowed
>>only single-letter variable names (and was all upper case, too, so it
> 
> 
> 	That must have been a really old version of FORTRAN -- all
> versions I've encountered allowed for, at least, 6 significant
> characters in variable names. (This goes back to F-IV/F-66). BASIC was
> limited to one or two characters.
> 
[...]
I think the original author was confusing Fortran and BASIC. I used 
Fortran II back in 1968, and that definitely allowed six-character names.

regards
  Steve