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From: hirchert@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Kurt Hirchert)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: A Question of Style
Message-ID: <1991May22.145531.17457@ncsa.uiuc.edu>
Date: 22 May 91 14:55:31 GMT
References: <12306@uwm.edu>
Sender: usenet@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News)
Organization: Nat'l Ctr for Supercomp App (NCSA) @ University of Illinois
Lines: 33
Originator: hirchert@mars

In article <12306@uwm.edu> jgd@uwm.edu writes:
...
>* Has anyone else encountered FORTRAN compilers with this trait?
>  [Flagging defined but unreferenced statement labels.]

I believe I have, but I can no longer remember which compiler it was
that had this check.
>
>* Is this trait good or bad?  Desirable or undesirable?

If the message is presented with a severity of warning or less, I would
consider it a good feature.  In many cases, the presence of an unreferenced
label is indicative of an error, but it is legal to have unreferenced (and
even unreferencable) statement labels, so the message should not indicate
an error, only that something is questionable.
>
>* Is the inability to suppress this specific message good or bad?

At a minimum, there should be a mechanism to suppress all warnings, so
you can spot the real error messages.  The ability to suppress a specific
warning message so you can more readily spot other warnings is highly
desirable.
>
>* Is this allowed/forbidden/not-specified by the Standard?  (We are
>  speaking X3.9-1978 here.  My perusal of the Standard leads me to
>  believe this excessive nattering is not disallowed, but is also 
>  not required.  However, I'm no standards expert.)

The FORTRAN 77 standard does not address error messages at all, so this
practice is not prohibited (and thus allowed).
-- 
Kurt W. Hirchert     hirchert@ncsa.uiuc.edu
National Center for Supercomputing Applications