Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!nuchat!uhnix1!sugar!ssd
From: ssd@sugar.UUCP (Scott Denham)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: F8X response (long)
Message-ID: <1518@sugar.UUCP>
Date: 5 Mar 88 08:48:37 GMT
References: <705@elxsi.UUCP> <44400017@hcx2> <2337@s.cc.purdue.edu>
Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX
Lines: 29
Summary: It wasn't a bug it was a feature !!
	 (But it's fixed anyway)

In article <2337@s.cc.purdue.edu>, ags@s.cc.purdue.edu (Dave Seaman) writes:
> Does this sound rather backward to you?  It does to me, too.  But before
> you dismiss the VSOS operating system completely, consider IBM's VM/CMS
> and their current FORTVS2 compiler.  In that environment you cannot open
> files by name at all, in any way that I know of.  You can open files only
> by "ddname", which means that you must remember to issue a "filedef" to
> tell the system what ddname to assign to the file before you execute the
> program.  It is not possible to issue filedefs from within an executing
> program in any way that I know of, and even if there is a way, this only
> means that VM is no worse than VSOS when it comes to opening files.
  
This was a known deficiency in IBM's VS fortran compiler - it was the
result of the '77 standard being to vague as to what the 'name' was  
supposed to mean. In the IBM developers view, it meant the filedef/ddname
in their environments. The SHARE Fortran project has convinced them of 
the error in their ways, and Version 2 Release 3 lets you have either
syntax that makes you happy. (Incidently, in our environment, it turns
out that the way they did it first is better about 80% of the time) There
is nothing the "new" form gives you that you couldn't do (albeit with
some user-written non-FORTRAN allocation routines) and the opposite was
not true. But I'm ecstatic to have both options! 
> -- 
> Dave Seaman	  					
> ags@j.cc.purdue.edu

                                            Scott Denham 
                                              Western Atlas International

Of course they're my opinions, I made 'em up didn't I ???