Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!umd5!purdue!i.cc.purdue.edu!j.cc.purdue.edu!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!hirchert
From: hirchert@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: FORTRAN horrors (weak typed poi
Message-ID: <50500047@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 12 Apr 88 20:18:00 GMT
References: <564@a.UUCP>
Lines: 26
Nf-ID: #R:a.UUCP:564:uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:50500047:000:1189
Nf-From: uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!hirchert    Apr 12 14:18:00 1988


>In article <50500045@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>, hirchert@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
>> Even if the arithmetic were fixed, I probably wouldn't choose PL/I today
>> because its pointers are weakly typed and I find that a bit too dangerous for
>> my tastes.
>>
>Boy, you must REALLY dislike C if the slightly weak typing on PL/I pointers
>puts you off.  If you like C you should find some other reason to dislike
>PL/I - or maybe you should decide that you like it after all.

"Slightly weak"?  PL/I allows me to use any pointer variable in conjunction
with any based variable.  There is no syntactic indication of whether this
is a match or mismatch because there is no nominal type associated with the
pointer.  In C, I can bypass the default strong typing with a cast, but this
at least gives me an explicit syntactic indication that I'm playing games.

>Anyway, this discussion REALLY doesn't belong on comp.lang.fortran (as I've
>said before).  

True, but our sites uses notes rather than news, so I have no convenient way
to direct my response (or subsequent followups) to another newsgroup.  Sorry.

>J. Giles
>Los Alamos 

Kurt W. Hirchert     National Center for Supercomputing Applications