Re: How to detect NULL input?

Richard E Maine <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Rich Townsend <rhdt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Fair enough. BTW, was result primarily introduced to support recursive
> functions?

> That's my impression. It was introduced in f90, before I was on J3, and
> I don't recall ever explicitly asking, but I would assign a reasonably
> high degree of confidence tothat guess.

In the early days of Fortran, when all variables were static
including the function return value, I could see the problem.

Is there a requirement that the function return variable be
static in versions allowing recursion?

It is more consistent with other languages not to need to assign
to a variable named after the function.

Also, there is a tradition (in the case of ENTRY) that all function
return variables are EQUIVALENCEd. Does it still do that, even
in the case of recursive functions not using a function return variable?

-- glen
.