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From: jlg@cochiti.lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Standards
Keywords: Fortran 90 standards
Message-ID: <22913@lanl.gov>
Date: 30 Apr 91 20:19:43 GMT
References: <12528@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Sender: news@lanl.gov
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 28

In article <12528@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>, wsb@boise.Eng.Sun.COM (Walt Brainerd) writes:
|> [...]
|> Standardizing existing practice: This is one of the greatest
|> red herrings in the development of Fortran, at least as presented
|> by some folks.  Of course, everything in Fortran 90 is "existing
|> practice"!  It's just a question of who has been practicing what.
|> [...]

Well, I am not aware of _any_ language or _any_ implementation of
any language which has "pointers" implemented in the undesireable
manner that the Fortran 90 proposal defines.  It is _not_ existing
practice.  Independent of that, it is simply not a good design.


|> [...]                  Like all other arguments, this one is
|> raised just precisely when someone wants to argue for or against
|> a particular feature and they conveniently forget it in other cases.

I, for one, never objected to pointers on the basis of existing
practice.  I would oppose the current model of pointers even if it
had a long (and, presumably dark) pedigree.  It is interesting that
I have heard the present pointer proposal _defended_ on the basis
of existing practice.  I guess the argument must go something like:
"it's common practice for languages to have pointers, so we'll invent
something totally bizarre and _call_ it a pointer facility so we
can defend it on the basis of existing practice."

J. Giles