Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!ames!hc!lanl!jlg
From: jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: dpANS Fortran 8x
Message-ID: <13951@lanl.gov>
Date: 20 Jun 89 22:06:49 GMT
References: <111223@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 22

From article <111223@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>, by khb@chiba.Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - SPD Languages Marketing -- MTS):
> Many agreed; otherwise "old" f8x would have had them. Unfortunately
> public comment from bot the US and Europe was militantly for pointers.
> While it would have been possible to have both sets of features, SET
> RANGE and friends were sacrified on the altar of simpiler is better ...

You have again missed my point.  SET RANGE  _IS_ simpler!!  Furthermore,
I don't believe the public comment was all that militant.  I really
believe that if the public knew what the committee would do with pointers,
no one would have recommended them.  For example, here's the part of
_my_ public review comment pertaining to pointers:

      Pointers are needed for many applications.  Although ALLOCATE and
      DEALLOCATE serve most of the necessary functionality, linked lists
      and other indirect referencing schemes are still left out.

As can be seen, my concern was mainly for the omission of recursive data
types.  If I had known what the committee would do with pointers, I would
have specifically congratulated them for leaving pointers out.  I would
prefer to do without recursive data structures rather than have the present
pointer proposal approved.  As it is, I'm sure that my comment above was
incorrectly counted amongst the "militant" support for pointers.