Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!killer!mic!d25001
From: d25001@mic.UUCP (Carrington Dixon)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Why have FORTRAN 8x at all?
Keywords: FORTRAN
Message-ID: <183@mic.UUCP>
Date: 5 Nov 88 20:52:25 GMT
References: <388@ubbpc.UUCP> <16187@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <391@ubbpc.UUCP> <2947@sugar.uu.net> <394@ubbpc.UUCP>
Reply-To: d25001@mic.UUCP (Carrington Dixon)
Organization: Micro Net
Lines: 21

In article <394@ubbpc.UUCP> wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison) writes:
>
> If certain companies like Itty Bitty Monopoly did not have non-portable
>constructs like that as a barrier to porting AWAY from their systems, how
>could they justify such an outrageous high price for their systems?
>

   If you were talking about their PL/I, I might agree with you.  In the
context of FORTRAN, I find the statement puzzling.  VS FORTRAN is fairly
lightly extended as compared to some others -- though there seem to be
more extensions with each release.  The VS FORTRAN manuals are _very_ good
about flagging all the extensions as such -- a refreshing change from
those of a lot of vendors.  There is even a compiler option to flag
(as warnings - I believe) all occurances of those features not sanctioned
by X3.9-1978.   
   Strange behavior for the product of a company that is trying to trap
the user into writing non-portable code.


Carrington Dixon
UUCP: { convex, killer }!mic!d25001