Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ukma!psuvm.bitnet!psuvmxa!cunyvm!byuvax!hallidayd
From: hallidayd@yvax.byu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran 8x:  implicit dereferencing
Message-ID: <668hallidayd@yvax.byu.edu>
Date: 29 Jun 89 22:08:52 GMT
Lines: 14

Actually, Bob (corbett@beatnix.UUCP), the problems you see with Fortran's
implicit dereferencing of pointers (message <2776@elxsi.UUCP>) will be no
more troublesome than the explicit dereferencing of pointers in C.  Many
are the times when people find their C code not doing what they want (or
bombing due to illegal memory references) due to a lack of the ``*''
operator, or an extra ``*'' (particularly in the case of dummy arguments).

The biggest problem that probably caused Walt to make his mistake was the
weight of experience with other computer languages that _do_ require
explicit dereferencing of pointers.  Hence my suggestion that we call them
something else in Fortran, since the aliasing model used in Fortran is
really quite simple and straight forward, once you leave behind your
preconceived notions of ``pointers''.  I caught the error without _ever_
having seen the proposal, just a few examples were sufficient to orient my
working model for this type of referencing scheme.  I see no reason why
this should not be the case with other programmers, once they leave behind
their old models.