Re: Is it time to legitimise REAL*8 etc?

Richard Maine wrote:
James Giles <jamesgiles@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

they decided to limit non-KIND type parameters to only be lengths.
There was no reason for that decision that I could discover.

If I understood what you meant, perhaps I could answer. What do you
mean by "only be lengths?" Have you just been confused by the
terminology used? If so that wouldn't be surprising. Yes, type
parameters are categorized as kind or length. If they aren't kind
parameters, they are called length ones. But that doesn't actually
mean that they have to have anything in particular to do with
lengths. [...]

Well this is exacly the opposite of what Van Snyder told me
back when NON_KIND was removed as the keyword and LEN
was put in its place. He insisted that LEN type parameter were
only for string lengths and array sizes. If a user ever wanted non-
KIND type parameters to do anything else, the committee would
have to separately consider that and add yet another attribute name,
he said. He claimed this was the advantage of the change - it
allowed the committee to extend to more type parameters in the
future. I claimed that implementors could already have extended
the set without the change of name (and that NON_KIND captured
the whole of any distinction that was needed).

If you're now saying that LEN type parameters *aren't* limited to
sizes and lengths of things, great. But you people need to get
your stories straight.

--
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

"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability" -- E. W. Dijkstra



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