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From: hirchert@harriett.ncsa.uiuc.edu (Kurt Hirchert)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: File handling in Fortran 77
Message-ID: <1990Oct3.161416.21053@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 3 Oct 90 16:14:16 GMT
References: <46016@masscomp.ccur.com> <1990Sep12.215551.16135@agate.berkeley.edu> <1990Oct1.174040.16208@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <2153@key.COM>
Sender: news@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News)
Reply-To: hirchert@harriett.ncsa.uiuc.edu (Kurt Hirchert)
Organization: National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Lines: 27

In article <2153@key.COM> sjc@key.COM (Steve Correll) writes:
>In article <1990Oct1.174040.16208@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>, hirchert@harriett.ncsa.uiuc.edu (Kurt Hirchert) writes:
>> In article <2144@key.COM> sjc@key.COM (Steve Correll) writes:
>> >Fortran 90 permits you to specify POSITION='REWIND', POSITION='APPEND', or
>> >POSITION='ASIS' in the OPEN statement. The latter leaves the file position
>> >unchanged if the file exists and was already connected.
>> 
>> Steve's description of POSITION='ASIS' is not entire correct.  ASIS provides
>> processor-dependent positioning.  I.e., it provides what FORTRAN 77 provided
>> ...
>
>My description had better be correct, because the last ten words of it are
>copied directly from lines 31 and 32 of section 9.3.4.7 of the S8.115 draft
>standard! ASIS behaves as I described when the file was already connected, but
>behaves as Kurt described (i.e. processor-dependent, like Fortran 77) when the
>file was not connected.

If those are literally the words in /S8.115 (I don't have my copy handy to
check), then I have a bone to pick with the people who did the editorial
work on that section.  The use of the past tense ("was connected") would
suggest that this is intended to apply to the case of a program opening a file,
reading part of it, closing it, and then opening it again later.  There was
never any intent of requiring positioning to be retained on files that are
closed, only on files that are currently connected (present tense!).
--
Kurt W. Hirchert     hirchert@ncsa.uiuc.edu
National Center for Supercomputing Applications