Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!brainerd
From: brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Character aliases are Satanic exten
Summary: It just got worse last week.
Message-ID: <92@unmvax.unm.edu>
Date: 23 May 89 22:06:10 GMT
References: <592@mbph.UUCP> <50500129@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <597@mbph.UUCP>
Organization: University of New Mexico at Albuquerque
Lines: 58

In article <597@mbph.UUCP>, hybl@mbph.UUCP (Albert Hybl  Dept of Biophysics  SM) writes:
> 
> _BUT NOT PORTABLE!_  Why not just call you experiment HAL-2001?

Because they are based on and utilize the huge investment in Fortran libraries
and programmer training.

> Like the muddled why that the character type has been implemented,
> ...
> or the gross omission of the DO ...  ENDDO control loops, or ...  

The character data type (as added to F77) was one example where it was
_not_modeled on widespread implementations (but that does not necessarily
make it bad or good, of course).

> I think that the _Standards Organization_ must retain absolute control
> over the language to provide adjudication of implementation disputes
> and to promote timely enhancements to the language.

But who controls the Standards Organization?  Right now X3J3 is about 50%
vendors, but at different times and for different languages, this
figure could vary widely.  Right now, for Fortran, about two-thirds
of the vendor's representatives have been on the committe less than
three years.  Do you really want _your_ language completely controlled
by a committee with this kind of makeup?  Or do you want it controlled
by a bunch of pointy-headed academicians who know nothing about the
"real" world (some members of X3J3 have been accused of being such).

> ... The
> standards committee not the vendors must be responsive to market
> pressures--that is, if we want a _portable_ standard.

One thing the vendors the vendors should understand better than
anyone else is market pressure

>  ... Sections
> 1.3.2.(4) and 1.4 guarantee that the objective of portability will
> never be achieved!

It can be achieved only (in the case of Fortran) by intelligent programmers
sticking to standard code with the help of the (new in Fortran 8x)
requirement on the processor to flag nonstandard syntax, when requested
to do so, and help in the form of shading of nonstandard stuff in
the vendor's manuals.

I think Hybl has very good points and I don't necessarily disagree with
them; I was just trying to explain why others have a different
point of view.

Now for the bad news if you don't like nonportable things in a standard.
Last week X3J3 voted that the user can specify what the character set
(perhaps to include Greek letters or an a umlaut, for example)
is to be in a way that is processor dependent and use these characters
in a subroutine name, for example.  As was pointed out, this already
can be done as a processor extension, so it provides the programmer
nothing new, but now the processor does not have to flag it as
nonstandard (and nonportable) because it is in the standard!
Don't blame me for this one; I wansn't there.