Yes, I used your information. Feel free to add more information gleaned from it to the list of facts.
On May 21, 2009, at 14:01, Aaron Rubin <aaron.rubin@4dtechnology.com>
Other new facts:
I think I need to cry foul here!These look like the numbers I provided, which I said were crude estimates at best. If someone did a good count, I missed it, and I apologize. If not, I wouldn't count them as "facts". Worse, you left off related numbers that bias these: that's 200 lines out of 80000, and about 2 percent of all variable references are to variables longer than 15 characters. But all of those numbers should be considered tenative estimated, at best.
1) Around 200 lines of code even within the standard library start at the 10th indentation level (40 characters gone already)
2) Around 10 percent of unique variable names even within the standard library have 15 characters or more
3) The origin of 80 character limit widths came from punch cards
What did I leave out?
That punch cards were available in sizes between 51 and 96 columns before and after the 80-column card became standard, so this debate is older than most people realize.
Many uses of those cards reserved the last 8 columns for card numbers, so the practical limit was 72 columns, not 80.
Finally, the 80 column card became standard when most printers used fan-fold 132 column paper, so someone felt there was a good reason to limit the input line length even then.
<mike