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From: wsb@boise.Eng.Sun.COM (Walt Brainerd)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Education for Fortran 90 (was: Fortran 9X replaced by Ada 9X ?)
Message-ID: <142733@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 19 Sep 90 17:06:27 GMT
References: <58199@masscomp.ccur.com> <63197@lanl.gov>
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Lines: 45

In article <63197@lanl.gov>, jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:
> From article <58199@masscomp.ccur.com>, by andyo@masscomp.ccur.com (Andy Oram):
> > [...]
> > 	Brainerd, Walter S., Charles H. Goldberg, and Jeanne C. Adams,
> > 	Programmer's Guide to Fortran 90, Intertext Publications, McGraw-Hill
> > 	Book Company, New York, 1990.
> 
> Brainerd, et. al. is very biased in favor of the new standard.  The book

 True.  As the preface says, the book emphasizes the new features of F90.

> glosses quickly over the really ugly features of the proposed standard.

 True.  But I sure didn't vote for them ^:)

> If they aren't worth being written up in detail - not even by members
> of the committee, why are they in the proposal (in particular: pointers
> to array sections - a quick glance reveals ther're redundant with no
> useful functionality - above book mentions them, but gives no examples
> of their use).
> 
> J. Giles

This book is _not_ a complete description and reference work for
Fortran 90 (that will be available from McGraw-Hill next year,
and all the ugly stuff will be covered!), but discusses the main
features that would be used by a Fortran 90 programmer writing
new code.  And the philosophy is to show only one way to do
things (hopefully the best way), so naturally the ugly stuff is
not discussed.

Regarding pointers, the kind J. Giles wants (addresses) were not
put in Fortran 90.  By a narrow margin, the X3J3 folks preferred
"descriptors" or "aliases" as the model.  Hence one of these things
(call them what you like) can "point to" / "alias" / "reference"
a row or a column of an array (or a two-dimensional part or
a five-dimensional array, or the next element in a linked list,
etc.).  Obviously this is useful, even if it is not what
J. Giles wants (and we should have some examples in the book
of pointers to sections of an array!).
--
Walt Brainerd        Sun Microsystems, Inc.
wsb@eng.sun.com      MS MTV 5-40
                     Mountain View, CA 94043
                     415/336-5991