Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!gitpyr!loligo!mccalpin
From: mccalpin@loligo.cc.fsu.edu (John McCalpin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: An exercise in futility
Keywords: portability vs vendor_extensions
Message-ID: <389@loligo.cc.fsu.edu>
Date: 8 Jan 89 23:33:05 GMT
References: <585@mbph.UUCP>
Reply-To: mccalpin@loligo.cc.fsu.edu (John McCalpin)
Organization: Supercomputer Computations Research Institute
Lines: 53

In article <585@mbph.UUCP> hybl@mbph.UUCP
(Albert Hybl  Dept of Biophysics  SM) writes:

>In message <3704@s.cc.purdue.edu> ags@s.cc.purdue.edu (Dave Seaman
>Purdue University) writes:
>First, let me give a real example.  I am currently porting
>some fortran code that produced the following diagnostic:
>        Common /control/ <====  natoms
>        ****Error: Identifier too long
>Section 18 states the a "symbolic name consists of one to six, 
>alphanumeric characters, the first of which must be a letter."
>Checking the **X blue book, we learn that a symbolic name can
>be 31 characters long.  My compiler strictly enforces the
>existing standard as you can see above.  By allowing **X to
>market its extended compiler, the standards committee has
>abandoned their stated intent to provide a horizontally
>portable fortran language standard!

God help us all if it became illegal to have extensions to Fortran!
The standard *allows* you to write a portable program.  In the case
above, you have simply chosen not to.  That is certainly not the fault
of the standards committee.  If you are seriously intent on portability,
then badger your vendor(s) into providing a compiler option to verify
ANSI compatibility --- then use it religiously.

>They are not serving the user community.

The obvious question is: "which user community?"  
The vast majority of standard-conforming programs really do work on
almost all commercially available compilers. If you are not satisfied
with standard Fortran, then you have the obligation to voice your
opinions in a formal statement to X3J3 when Fortran-8X comes out for
review again (next summer?). If you do, your opinions will be counted
just like everyone else's.
If you cannot get your job done with standard Fortran, but you can get
it done with extensions, then be thankful that the extensions exist, and
request that the standards committee make them mandatory. 

>Incidentally, this is an extension that I believe
>should have been added to the Language Standard many, many
>years ago.

Agreed!

P.S. You should also be thankful that your compiler gave such a clear
     error message in the above code segment.  Most are far less helpful.
     For example, one of the compilers I use dumps core if the program
     name exceeds 6 characters....
-- 
----------------------   John D. McCalpin   ------------------------
Dept of Oceanography & Supercomputer Computations Research Institute
mccalpin@masig1.ocean.fsu.edu		mccalpin@nu.cs.fsu.edu
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