Re: Exporting variables in and out subroutines (F77)

From: Richard Maine (nospam_at_see.signature)
Date: 09/05/04 

Date: Sun, 05 Sep 2004 13:44:11 -0700

*** Hendrickson <***.hendrickson@att.net> writes:

> kia wrote:
>> Jugoslav Dujic wrote:
>>>Of course, this should be
>>> real A
>>> dimension A(n,n)
>>>my F77 is rusty...
>> Well, then your Fortran as a whole is not worth a damn! The last I
>> heard F77 constitutes a proper subset* of F9x,

> That's about a mile or so off base....

Indeed. A bit of a logic error also. What Jugoslav showed *WAS* a
proper subset of f90. He happened to misremember exactly which
subset f77 was and forced himself into a smaller subset than
necessary to conform to f77. If he had tried to claim that the f77
code as not also valid f90, then he'd have been making the error you
seem to be castigating him for, but I see not a hint of that error
in Jugoslav's post.

Hmm. The only way I could see a criticism like that as even making
any sense at all is if kia was not aware that the code Jugoslav
showed is indeed valid f90/f95. It isn't a style I personally like,
and it is a pretty rare style in new code - perhape rare enough that
kia didn't recognize it as valid f90. Assuming an error like that is
the only way I can even make sense at all of kia's criticism....it
is, however, an error.

I don't see that any of the errors in question merit such harsh words.
Jugoslav's error of misremembering which subset f77 was doesn't merit
them. Nor does kia's error of either logic or of failure to
recognize valid f90 (I can't tell which error he made, but it must
have been one of those).

The only thing that I see here that I'd say merited harsh words was
the intemperate use of those same harsh words. When correcting what
we perceive to be errors in Fortran, let's stick to correcting the
Fortran errors instead of making the more serious errors of
personal hostility. 

-- 
Richard Maine
email: my last name at domain
domain: summertriangle dot net