brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd) (10/24/88)
We have been hearing lots of good ideas from people who appear to be
REAL users. That is good.
The mention of the really nice things in Fortran 77 got me thinking.
I agree that the CHARACTER data type and the IF..END IF are probably
two of the best "new" features of Fortran 77. For those who were not there
in the 70s when all this radical stuff was being proposed, the arguments
against these features were:
1. They are not standard practice. This was true. In fact, the character
data type was to replace Hollerith, which was actually removed from the
standard (something not proposed this time). Also, few major vendors
had an IF block, although it was in virtually every one of the
hundreds of available preprocessors.
2. Inclusion of these features will make the language no longer be Fortran.
Inclusion of an IF block will be like PL/I and Algol;
besides the GO TO will do the job.
3. Implementation will be difficult, because some kind of information about
character length will have to be passed in with actual character arguments.
Sound familiar? Actually, it's worse: the main person behind getting the
IF..END IF into Fortran 77 is the same wild-eyed radical Ph. D. computer
scientist member of the "gang of five" that is trying to "modernize"
Fortran again. (Just for the record, only one of the five is a Ph.D computer
scientist.) I can't claim any credit or blame for the CHARACTER data type;
it was all done by the time I joined X3J3.
======================================================================
Walt Brainerd, Unicomp, Inc., 505/275-0800, brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu