bernhold@qtp.ufl.edu (David E. Bernholdt) (08/27/89)
In article <305@unmvax.unm.edu> brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd) writes: >In article <12687@pur-ee.UUCP>, hankd@pur-ee.UUCP (Hank Dietz) writes: >> >> Did I miss someone talking about a Fortran subset standard? I'd be perfectly >> happy if they kept Fortran 77 active as the subset dialect standard. ;-) >> >This is an alternative that makes a lot more sense >than what X3 is proposing (i.e., two different standards and two different >documents). X3J3 is currently conducting a poll to see whether the X3 idea >of two standards or the subset idea is preferred, given that one will be >forced by X3. I agree with Walt that it makes more sense to keep F77 as a subset of F8x. In fact, I'd even vote for requiring in the future that the previous standard be a subset of the newest standard. (NOTE: I include *only* the previous standard -- I think the idea of getting rid of obselescent (sp?) features after 20 years or more is fine.) As part of a research group who has large Fortran codes running on many different platforms, we have enough troubles (1) getting our people to write standard-conforming code and (2) hooking the codes up to the necessary system-dependent routines. The last thing I want to worry about is whether the machine we just got time on runs F77 or F8x because once two standards are established, they will surely go their separate ways and become incompatible! -- David Bernholdt bernhold@qtp.ufl.edu Quantum Theory Project bernhold@ufpine.bitnet University of Florida Gainesville, FL 32611 904/392 6365