The Fortran Maximum Record Length

The GENERIC utility assumes it is dealing with Fortran 77 source code which cannot go beyond column 72. If the substitution of a token results in a line becoming longer than 72 characters, it will be broken automatically at column 72 and continued on the next line, using a ``:'' continuation character in column 6 of the next line.

It is recommended that source lines in generic routines be kept well below 72 characters in length to prevent this from happening.

NOTE: Comment lines ( i.e. those beginning `C', `c', `D', `d' or `*') which are longer than 72 characters are unaltered by GENERIC. So are lines of code with an in-line comment ( i.e. those containing a ``!'' character).

This algorithm is not perfect and it is possible to fool it with end of line comments on long lines or exclamation marks in character strings. However, this seems not to have proven a problem in practice.