Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!skipper!altair!maine From: maine@altair.dfrf.nasa.gov (Richard Maine) Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran Subject: Re: A Question of Style Message-ID: Date: 24 May 91 19:44:48 GMT References: <12306@uwm.edu> <1991May21.140440.16964@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <1991May21.180713.1602@unixg.ubc.ca> Sender: news@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov Organization: NASA Dryden, Edwards, Cal. Lines: 40 In-reply-to: burley@albert.gnu.ai.mit.edu's message of 24 May 91 14:46:33 GMT On 24 May 91 14:46:33 GMT, burley@albert.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Craig Burley) said: Craig> Next, it is not likely that a GOTO to a FORMAT label will be Craig> accepted by a compiler, Murphy's law notwithstanding. It may not be likely, but I have used at least one compiler (which shall remain unnamed) that allowed such GOTOs with nary a complaint. I was not pleased. As long as I'm posting to this thread anyway, I'll state that I find myself in agreement with the position stated by several others that I like the compiler to warn me about things like unreferenced labels, but I also like to be able to turn such warnings off. And I agree with Burley that it is desirable to be able to turn off specific messages, instead of just the whole class of warnings. As pointed out by some others, sed can do this, but somehow I never find myself using it that way. I have to disagree with Burley about the question of defaults though. Warning messages that aren't given by default aren't worth much. My experience is that all too often nobody thinks of turning on the warning messages until after they have found the bug(s) in question. I had some arguments with one vendor that would not by default give warnings for code like subroutine sub(c) c = 'This is a string' end which I claim is almost certain to be a bug caused by a missing character declaration. They thought people porting code from Vaxen would complain if the compiler did not quietly accept such stuff. Admitedly, the particular warning that started this thread is not as big a deal as that, but I hold to my general philosophy in the matter. -- -- Richard Maine maine@altair.dfrf.nasa.gov