Xref: utzoo comp.lang.fortran:1686 misc.legal:6931
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!killer!mic!d25001
From: d25001@mic.UUCP (Carrington Dixon)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran,misc.legal
Subject: Re: An exercise in futility
Keywords: portability vs vendor_extensions the_Brooks_Report
Message-ID: <207@mic.UUCP>
Date: 9 Jan 89 23:28:22 GMT
References: <585@mbph.UUCP>
Reply-To: d25001@mic.UUCP (Carrington Dixon)
Organization: Micro Net
Lines: 30

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

     Sorry, the strongest statment you can make is that your compiler
enforces more of the standard than did the previous compiler.  In order
to diagnose "identifier too long" it had to recognise that "control"
was an identifier.  The X3.9-1978 not only madates that identifiers be
no more than six characters long; it also defines the character set as
consisting _ONLY_ of the UPPER-CASE letters.  Thus, a compiler that
adhered to the standard and only to the standard would claim that this
line was meaningless.

     There are not too many compilers left that mandate upper-case only;
even the IBM mainframe compiler now allows lowercase, but a standards
comforming FORTRAN progam is one that -- inter alia -- is coded in upper-
case only.




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