Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!killer!mic!d25001
From: d25001@mic.UUCP (Carrington Dixon)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: An exercise in futility
Keywords: uppercase lowercase standard
Message-ID: <211@mic.UUCP>
Date: 13 Jan 89 02:55:46 GMT
References: <585@mbph.UUCP> <207@mic.UUCP> <3131@ttrdc.UUCP>
Reply-To: d25001@mic.UUCP (Carrington Dixon)
Organization: Micro Net
Lines: 68

> levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy) writes:
>In article <207@mic.UUCP>, d25001@mic.UUCP (Carrington Dixon) writes:
>> The X3.9-1978 not only mandates that identifiers be
>> no more than six characters long; it also defines the character set as
>> consisting _ONLY_ of the UPPER-CASE letters.

>Could someone please quote chapter and verse.  The paper "A Portable FORTRAN
>77 Compiler", by Feldman and Weinberger, seems to imply a reading of the
>standard that calls for a monocase alphabet but doesn't specify what case.

     Gladly, today we take our text from Chapter Three of the Book of
ANSI X3.9-1978, verses 3.1 and 3.1.1:

     3.1 FORTRAN Character Set
     The FORTRAN character set consists of twenty-six letters, ten
     digits, and thirteen special characters.

     3.1.1 Letters
     A letter is one of the twenty-six characters:

     A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

     This rules out the use of two distinct cases a la C or Modula-2
pretty certainly.  I would have thought that it was pretty definite
about which case to use too; even though it does not use the terms
upper- or lower-case in this area.  It has listed the characters that it
defines as letters and they are all UPPERCASE.  I would be interested to
learn how Feldman and Weinberger justified their contention that the
standard leaves the selection of case undefined.  [IMHO a standard that
mandated a single case and then neglected to define which case would be
_seriously_ defective.  The authors of X3.9-1978 do not appear to have
been negligent in this regard.]

     The only explicit mention of case that I found in a hurried look
through the standard was in Section 1.5, Notation Used in This
Standard:

     (1) Special characters from the FORTRAN character set,
         uppercase letters, and uppercase words are to be written
         as shown, except where otherwise noted.

     (2) Lowercase letters and lowercase words indicate general
         entities for which specific entities must be substituted
         in actual statements. ...

>This shows (in the UNIX f77 compiler, which resulted from Feldman and Wein-
>berger's work) in the mapping of uppercase identifiers to lowercase for the
>linker, and the fact that lowercase values are expected for parameters in
>statements like OPEN(UNIT=1,STATUS='scratch') and lowercase values are
>returned by statements like INQUIRE(UNIT=1,ACCESS=CHRSTR).  For all I know
>this is an erroneous interpretation, but they don't seem to think so (they
>name the only three ways they think their compiler deviates from the standard,
>and case handling isn't among them).  It's a pain in porting code, obviously.

     This may be more in keeping with the way that UNIXphiles like to
code, but I am afraid that it is in violation of what appears (to me at
least) to be the plain wording of the standard.  A conforming FORTRAN
compiler may _allow_ lowercase values in these instances but one that
_requires_ them is not conforming as I understand the term.

     Incidentally, I am NOT trying to defend the use of only uppercase
beyond pointing out that those who wish to abhor all that is not
allowed by the standard must be prepared to forego lowercase.  Lowercase
may be more esthetically pleasing and easier to type, etc., but it is
not X3.9-1978 conforming.

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