Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!cbmvax!atha!lyndon
From: lyndon@cs.AthabascaU.CA (Lyndon Nerenberg)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Position in file after open?
Message-ID: <1177@atha.AthabascaU.CA>
Date: 18 Oct 89 18:15:01 GMT
References: <1162@atha.AthabascaU.CA> <50500152@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <126396@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Organization: Athabasca University
Lines: 24

In article <126396@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> khb@sun.UUCP (Keith Bierman - SPD Advanced Languages) writes:
>As is moderately well known, this is a "feature" of the '77 standard.
>While it is "obvious" that a freshly opened file should be positioned
>at the start, there is a legend that at least one popular compiler
>positions to the end of file just to prove to customers how bad the
>standard is ...

From IBM's _VS FORTRAN Application Programming: Language Reference_:

	"After a sucessful open ... the file is not repositioned
	 at the beginning"

So much for legend :-)

The f77 compiler from the UNIX SVR3.1 porting base explicitly positions
to the end as well.

Are there any other languages that come to mind that exhibit this
type of behavior?
-- 
Lyndon Nerenberg  VE6BBM / Computing Services / Athabasca University
  {alberta,decwrl,lsuc}!atha!lyndon || lyndon@cs.AthabascaU.CA

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