Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!nikhefh!p34
From: p34@nikhefh.nikhef.nl (Paul van Deurzen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Absoft Fortran
Summary: Use option H to avoid 'save' problems
Message-ID: <673@nikhefh.nikhef.nl>
Date: 19 Dec 89 22:27:00 GMT
References: <891207024528.958022@DMZRZU71-UNI-MAINZ--GERMANY>
Reply-To: p34@nikhefh.nikhef.nl (Paul van Deurzen)
Organization: Nikhef-H, Amsterdam (the Netherlands).
Lines: 21

> The original posting told us about the 'abnormal' behaviour regarding the
> use of common blocks in Absoft's implementation of Fortran.

By far the simplest way to cure the 'abnormal', ie. non-IBM, Cray, VAX etc.
behaviour of Absoft's Fortran is to set the 'H' option.
This not only enables weird F66 features like 'extended range DO loops' but
also let the compiler treat all variable storage as STATIC.

In other words: you no longer have to define all your commons in main. 
In addition it saves local variables and thus constructs like:

      data init/0/
      if (init .eq. 0) then
          ...initialise....
          init = 1
      else
          ...do something...
      endif

will behave as expected, ie. only initialise once.
 (I didn't say I like this way of initialising...).