Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-sdd!hplabsy!hpfcso!mjs
From: mjs@hpfcso.HP.COM (Marc Sabatella)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Re: NOT Educating FORTRAN programmers to use C
Message-ID: <8960006@hpfcso.HP.COM>
Date: 23 Jan 90 16:39:28 GMT
References: <15623@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA
Lines: 13

>If suspect that you would really be happier with Fortran 90.  It has
>dynamic memory (but NOT implemented using explicit pointers - so no
>aliasing slow-down).

Now wait a minute.  Last I heard, Fortran 90 has something very akin to
a pointer, only worse - you can have a pointer to arbitrary and even sparse
array slices.  For instance, given an array indexed from 1 to 20 of reals, it
is possible to have a pointer to an arrary of 5 reals, and get it to "point"
at the "array" consisting of a[2], a[6], a[7], a[17], and a[19], where the
latter indices are determined at run time.  Now they may require that you not
modify this pointer and the original array itself in the same scope, but
dereferencing these types of pointers has got to be a logistic mightmare worse
than aliasing.