SEYMOUR@phast.phys.washington.EDU (05/20/88)
Two weeks ago I reported a bug concerning corruption of Comment lines
beginning with lowercase c if the /D_LINE compiler switch was used.
Fortran v4.8 has about 7 major bugs as distributed.
They've had so many SPRs that they're bypassing (read: overloaded)
the normal response center on the east coast and having Colo Springs
generate patch kits (read: complete replacement distribution) too.
I SPR'd it (by mail), received a phone call one week later and the
tape the next day.
The original (buggy) Fortran is v4.8-276
the repaired Fortran which i received is v4.8-283
(if you get a NEWER version, why not tell INFO-VAX, along with
a description of the bug that got it. Then we can SPR for a new copy
(of ANY software product, not just Fortran) without having
to be bitten by the bug first...)
-- dick seymour
seymour@uwaphast.bitnet
p.s. the bugs were:
1) bad code generated (BCG) for BLOCK DATA subroutines without
any COMMON declarations
2) compiler goes into an endless loop when a DO WHILE is
determined to be endless at compile time is inside a DO loop
which can be eliminated at compile time (due to no results
being needed later in the routine)
3) BCG involving array references in complicated DO-loops. a register
was being mis-loaded.
4) invalid diagnostics when a lowercase c with /d_lines (mine!)
5) internal consistency failure if a routine had more than 64k declaration
statements [2 comments: WOW! and why does DEC still use 16 bits?]
6) BCG with some block moves and block initializations if a subroutine
had two dummy array arguments which "happen to be" the same actual
argument.
7) BCG sometimes involving a character constant as the run-time FORMAT
of an i/o statement contained in a DO-loop