Expand, a system for input card replication

In an effort to reduce the volume of card handling at our installation, our operating system [1] was modified to include an EXPAND feature. The function of EXPAND is to eliminate the necessity of reproducing a card or a group of cards of the input dock to any particular job. Once a group of cards appears in an input deck, they may be caused to reappear subsequently by the inclusion of a single control card which calls for the “insertion” of cards by sequence numbers or letters. The user is permitted to specify minor modifications to the cards as they are being inserted. Hence, the user may easily run parameter studies, insert similar EQUIVALENCE, COMMON and DIMENSION statements in a multisubroutined FORTRAN program, or specify similar regions on a large mesh such as is needed for a thermal or nuclear study. Note also that when it is necessary to change a deck and rerun, it is only necessary to repunch the original card—every reappearance caused by EXPAND automatically reflects the new card.

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