Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!hc!beta!a!jlg
From: jlg@a.UUCP (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: FORTRAN horrors (character init)
Message-ID: <574@a.UUCP>
Date: 14 Apr 88 07:44:09 GMT
References: <563@a.UUCP> <337@m3.mfci.UUCP>
Organization: Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos, N.M.
Lines: 21
Summary: sorry

In article <337@m3.mfci.UUCP>, root@mfci.UUCP (SuperUser) writes:
> 
> Rubbish.  Neither of your examples are standard Fortran 77.  The standard
> clearly states, in section 6.2.3, that a character constant expression
> may NOT contain function references.  It doesn't matter if the arguments
> are constants and the functions are intrinsics.  [...]

Whoops, sorry - quite right.  Fortran 8x will allow intrinsic functions
in constant expressions but not Fortran 77.  That's what I get for not
reading the next page!  This is certainly an 8x feature that no one will
object to.  (Note - most Fortran compilers already allow some subset
of intrinsics to be used in constant expressions.  CHAR() is one of 
the ones usually allowed because it's easy to do at compile time.  
I actually did check my original code sequences on a few compilers 
before I submitted!)

Actually, most of the vendors on the committee probably DO object to the
new 8x feature.  Some of them don't have compile-time access to the run-time
math library.  oh well...

J. Giles
Los Alamos