Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!gatech!unmvax!brainerd
From: brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Better ways of expressing "KIND" (was dpANS Fortran 8x)
Summary: LENGTH is still there
Message-ID: <172@unmvax.unm.edu>
Date: 25 Jun 89 01:26:05 GMT
References: <645hallidayd@yvax.byu.edu>
Organization: University of New Mexico at Albuquerque
Lines: 24

In article <645hallidayd@yvax.byu.edu>, hallidayd@yvax.byu.edu writes:
> Therefore, if the standard will implement a range like designation for
> INTEGERs (and see to it that the CHARACTER designation is not called KIND
> but something like LENGTH) I will be quite happy to essentially ignore the
> machine dependent KIND---unless someone can give me a convincing argument
> as to *why* I should use it.
> 
You don't need to worry about the machine numbers for KIND of integer
and real unless you want to.  You can get default and you can specify
range and precision, as in

REAL (SELECTED_REAL_KIND (9, 70) X

which gives X 9 digits of precision and a range to 10**70.
This is not as beautiful as previously proposed, but does provide
the functionality and avoids some problems.

Character has TWO type parameters, LENGTH and KIND.
LENGTH is as it always has been.
You don't need to worry about kind unless you want to make sure the
representation is something other than the default on your machine,
e.g., ASCII, KANJI, or CHEMICAL.

Walt Brainerd  Unicomp, Inc.  brainerd@unmvax.cs.unm.edu