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From: bobal@microsoft.UUCP (Bob ALLISON)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Microsoft Fortran
Message-ID: <54010@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 9 Apr 90 19:42:47 GMT
References: <78998@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Reply-To: bobal@microsoft.UUCP (Bob Allison)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 48

Mea culpa.  It turns out there are about six really stupid bugs in version 5
of MS FORTRAN.  Call up MS Product Support, tell them your story, and
they'll ship you a new version of the front end which solves the problems.
All of these bugs show up in annoying obvious ways like this, so don't worry
about corrupted code.

This fixed version of the front end has been available for about seven
months.  It seems like no one is ever willing to call MS Product Support
when they've got a problem.  Let me state for the record that, while there
have been substantial problems in the past (as there were when MS FORTRAN's
version number was 3.31 or less), I believe that Product Support for FORTRAN
is really trying to improve.  Any problems they can't figure out are 
forwarded to developers.  I have regular meetings with the PSS supervisor 
responsible for FORTRAN and she's very sincere in her efforts.  I regularly
try to review their responses for accuracy and completeness and believe that
they are doing a pretty good job.

In article <78998@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Rajiv Agrawal <agrawal@cis.ohio-state.edu> writes:
>Recently we upgraded to MS Fortran 5.0 and I have been quite happy with
>the compiler.  Much better than the previous versions except some new
>errors have crept up ... SAVE statement for COMMON blocks.  Last time
>I compiled my code under MS FORTRAN 4.1, I never got any errors.  Here is
>what happens:
>
>	subroutine sub1 
>	common /abc/ x,y,x
>	save /abc/
>	....
>	end
>	subroutine sub2
>	common /abc/ x,y,z
>	save /abc/
>	...
>	end
>
>
>The compiler produces an error saying that ABC has already been declared 
>SAVE.  Other compilers, RM/Fortran , VAX Fortran do not give the above
>error.  Maybe, its time I fished out an old dusty copy of the Fortran 77
>standard and verified what is going on.
>
>Rajiv.

Anyway, sorry for any convenience and hope the updated version works out
for you.

Bob Allison
uunet!microsoft!bobal