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From: hirchert@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Fortran 8x conformance checking
Message-ID: <50500106@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 17 Mar 89 20:02:00 GMT
Lines: 31
Nf-ID: #N:uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:50500106:000:1640
Nf-From: uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!hirchert    Mar 17 14:02:00 1989


Keith Bierman and Richard Edwin Maine have been engaged in a somewhat
speculative discussion about what conformance checking is required by
Fortran 8x.  Here's the straight scoop:

FORTRAN 77 (the current standard) consists almost entirely of a description
of standard-conforming programs and what they mean.  Standard-conforming
processors are addressed primarily by the requirement that they correctly
execute standard-conforming programs, with a few secondard requirements
stemming from places where the behavior of a standard-conforming program is
only partially defined.

Shortly after FORTRAN 77 was made an ANSI standard, it was also made a U.S.
government purchasing standard (a FIPS).  The FIPS additionally required a
processor to be able to identify nonstandard usage.  (The FIPS is the reason
the FORTRAN compilers from most major vendors have some means of checking for
standard conformance.)

Throughout the Fortran 8x development there has strong pressure to place
more requirements on a standard-conforming processor.  X3J3 has resisted
adding any restrictions that would prohibit extensions or require run-time
tests, but has been open to imposing requirements roughly equivalent to that
of the FIPS (since a revised FIPS would probably have such requirements
anyway).  The text Keith and Richard have been discussing is X3J3's attempt
to incorporate the FIPS requirement into the standard itself.

In other words, processors conforming to Fortran 8x will have to have an
option to identify nonstandard usage in Fortran programs.

Kurt W. Hirchert     hirchert@ncsa.uiuc.edu
National Center for Supercomputing Applications