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From: hirchert@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Kurt Hirchert)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: internal list-directed i/o
Message-ID: <1990May29.220407.12112@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 29 May 90 22:04:07 GMT
References: <581@illini.osc.edu>
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Lines: 25

In article <581@illini.osc.edu> djh@osc.edu (David Heisterberg) writes:
>Can anyone give a justification as to why internal list-directed i/o
>is not required of a FORTRAN 77 implementation?  I'm interested because
>I have to fix several occurrences of this in a program I'm porting.
>In this particular case it's a trivial task, but annoying nonetheless.
>Thanks.

List-directed output was excluded because of the difficulty in using it
portably.  (There is such latitude in the format actually produced by
a processor that there is no way to portably determine how big a buffer
would be needed to receive the results of list-directed internal output.)
List-directed input was excluded merely as a matter of symmetry.
[Fortran 90 took the reverse point of view -- list-directed internal input
was seen to be useful and was thus allowed and list-directed internal output
was then allowed as a matter of symmetry, in spite of its not being
particularly portable.]

>-- 
>David J. Heisterberg		djh@osc.edu		And you all know
>The Ohio Supercomputer Center	djh@ohstpy.bitnet	security Is mortals'
>Columbus, Ohio			ohstpy::djh		chiefest enemy.

-- 
Kurt W. Hirchert     hirchert@ncsa.uiuc.edu
National Center for Supercomputing Applications