Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!syntron!jtsv16!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!chiba!khb
From: khb%chiba@Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - Sun Tactical Engineering)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran 88
Keywords: fortran standards
Message-ID: <74490@sun.uucp>
Date: 25 Oct 88 17:19:03 GMT
Article-I.D.: sun.74490
References: <2060@unmvax.unm.edu> <15851@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <74170@sun.uucp> <17070@ames.arc.nasa.gov>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: khb@sun.UUCP (Keith Bierman - Sun Tactical Engineering)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 27

>
>I would like to point out that there are many people out there who accept
>MOST of the proposed features of the standard without accepting the 
>complete standard.  The specific feature that seems to give the most
>people trouble is that of MODULE.  I wonder if everyone could agree
>that a subset of the new standard which left out the MODULE stuff
>(or anything which breaks the self-contained nature of fortran subroutines)
>would be a reasonably "small" and simple to compile language.  Many
>fortrans already support pointers and vector array notation.
>
>So, getting back to the original posting: suppose we leave out MODULE.
>How many people still object?
>

MODULE has proven easy to implement in other languages, no reason to
believe f88 will entail any difficulty. Lack of module makes creating
libraries (using overloading, and abstract data typing , etc.) hard.
If EVERYTHING else were accepted, I would tolerate the removeal of
MODULE, but I would lobby for it to be implemented anyway. 

Frankly I don't understand why anyone wants to remove MODULE.




Keith H. Bierman
It's Not My Fault ---- I Voted for Bill & Opus