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Date: 03 Dec 2008 21:33:37 +0000
From: "N.M. Maclaren" <nmm1@cam.ac.uk>
To: WG5 <sc22wg5@open-std.org>
Subject: Re: [ukfortran] (SC22WG5.3716) (j3.2006) the interoperability TR - an alternative descriptor design
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On Dec 3 2008, Bill Long wrote:

>Initially all of the procedures that have assumed-shape, allocatable, or 
>pointer dummy arguments will be ones written in Fortran.  One of the 
>basic objectives of the feature is to allow C users to call these 
>routines directly.  Of course, the same routines need to be callable 
>from Fortran as well.  I don't see how this proposal comes close to 
>meeting that requirement in any reasonable way.  Let alone an implicit 
>requirement that the feature be usable for a normal C programmer.  I do 
>not see this as an improvement over the current proposal.

Then I haven't made myself clear. It meets that requirement as well as 
N1761. As I said, I wrote and posted it in haste, so it is probably 
unclear.

If you mean that the same entry point must be callable directly from either 
Fortran or C, then you should say so, and that is a serious (and many would 
say, completely unacceptable) constraint. And N1761 doesn't enable it.

I regret that you chose not to discuss this at Tokyo, because there are a
lot of questions that N1761 doesn't answer.  If the objective is to handle
solely assumed-shape, allocatable and pointer types of intrinsic element
or target types, then N1761 is obviously inadequate to meet the requirements
of MPI (and the UK).  If it is intended to be more general, I don't see how
it can do it.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
Email:  nmm1@cam.ac.uk
Tel.:  +44 1223 334761    Fax:  +44 1223 334679

