Re: one-liner for characater replacement

analyst41@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
....
Since C interoperability has been added, that ought to take care of
the ability to control where every bit and byte starts out and ends
up.

Not even close. That's the kind of thing that's explicitly left out
of C interop so far. If a C struct has bit-resolution component
sizes, there is no way to declare a Fortran derived type to
correspond.

....
I also think mutiplying the kinds of available floating point and
integer numbers has been a colossal mistake. Kinds different from the
default should have been realized through libraries and not entered
the language itself.

I think the concept of KIND was a mistake. I think decimal float
will be a big mistake. I think multiple integer and real types is
merely a recognition of common practice. Implementors have
always had nonstandard support for multiple sizes of integers.
Many have had more than two floats (and that will soon be a
necessity, as more people find single precision inadequate, and
more people at least occasionally need more than double).

....
The language as it stands seems to be loaded with features that are
mostly useless in its domain of application and still lacks simple
features that are by now pretty much universally acknowledged as
desirable, even essential.


I can only think of a few things in this last category. Most people
have long assumed that some simple form of stantardized macros
was overdue (like: since the late 1970's). Some sort of variant
derived type is widely desired. Unsigned integers are on the list.
And bit strings. (Though what some people expect bit strings to
be is difficult to discern. One person that frequently mentions
them has explicitly rejected in past discussions the idea that
they should be strings whose components are bits.)

I don't think any of these qualify as "essential".

I think that a clean way to declare generic procedures is needed.
(No CLASS(*) isn't an example. I want something that doesn't
simply turn the language into a "typeless' one.)

A feature like A < X < B was certainly *not* "universally acknowledged
as desirable, even essential". C allows the syntax, but the semantics is
vastly different than you desire (and is almost always a mistake).
Other than that, I can't find any mention of it in any literature on
popular language features. And if it's in many languages, it's not
a feature that makes their public lists of important features.

--
J. Giles

"I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software
design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously
no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated
that there are no obvious deficiencies." -- C. A. R. Hoare


.

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