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From: garry@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU (Garry Wiegand)
Newsgroups: net.lang.f77
Subject: Re: Question on "Parameter" statement;  and a new question!
Message-ID: <198@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU>
Date: Mon, 3-Feb-86 16:37:11 EST
Article-I.D.: batcompu.198
Posted: Mon Feb  3 16:37:11 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 5-Feb-86 01:13:54 EST
Reply-To: garry%geology@cu-arpa.cornell.edu.arpa
Organization: Cornell Engineering && Flying Moose Graphics
Lines: 27

In a recent article donn@utah-cs.UUCP wrote:
>Peter Shenkin's new question:
>
>	... I always thought PARAMETER definitions were not subject to
>	the IMPLICIT rules; VMS Fortran behaves according to my
>	preconception, at least in this example. 
>...

I can help out a little, I think: There are TWO TYPES of "parameter"
statements in VMS Fortran!

If you use parentheses around the items in the list of parameters, the
compiler follows the Fortran-77 rules -- the "parameter" behaves almost
identically to the equivalent simple "data" statement. 

If you DON'T use parentheses, you get the old DEC Fortran-4-Plus
"parameter" definition -- the parameters work like simple small macros,
and the effective type of the parameter "name" is the type of the
expression on the right. 

If you think you may have fallen across this, try compiling with a
"/STANDARD" switch. 

(Hope you don't have too many ENDDOs or STRUCTUREs, or it will
complain loudly indeed.)

garry wiegand