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From: charlie@mica.stat.washington.edu (Charlie Geyer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: dpANS Fortran 8x
Summary: POINTERS considered harmful
Message-ID: <1541@uw-entropy.ms.washington.edu>
Date: 21 Jun 89 04:08:51 GMT
References: <1536@uw-entropy.ms.washington.edu> <13949@lanl.gov>
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Reply-To: charlie@mica.stat.washington.edu (Charlie Geyer)
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In article <13949@lanl.gov> jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:

> Pointers are a bad idea because they put too much functionality into
> a single construct.  In this regard they are rather like GOTOs.

I can't disagree with this.  Pointers are medium level, not high
level, constructs, much like GOTOs.

> I think that RANGE and IDENTIFY are _MUCH_ better at array sectioning
> than the present POINTER proposal is.  For recursive data structures
> I think that they should be provided as just that: recursive structures
> without explicit pointers required.  Aside from these, I can't think
> of any other need for pointers.  I think that Fortran should not have
> pointers introduced.

I won't argue with this either.  I'm not sure it's right, but it's a
reasonable opinion.  I never would have made any argument if you'd
posted this in the first place.