From Craig.Dedo@mixcom.com Fri Feb 7 03:49:41 1997 Received: from mixcom.mixcom.com (mixcom.mixcom.com [198.137.186.100]) by dkuug.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id DAA08498 for ; Fri, 7 Feb 1997 03:49:39 +0100 Received: from 205.254.192.133 by mixcom.mixcom.com (8.6.12/2.2) id UAA02239; Thu, 6 Feb 1997 20:50:53 -0600 Message-Id: <199702070250.UAA02239@mixcom.mixcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Thu, 06 Feb 97 20:45:43 -0600 From: Craig Dedo Subject: Re: (SC22WG5.1251) Informal Review of Conditional Compilation Draft Standard To: Miles Ellis Cc: David Epstein (X3J3 - Consultant) , WG5 Mailing List In-Reply-To: <199701201750.SAA16714@dkuug.dk> X-Mailer: SPRY Mail Version: 04.00.06.17 Dear Miles and David: On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, Miles Ellis wrote: >David Epstein distributed an email version of the latest draft of this >document on 13th January, and I hope to have a properly formatted version >on the server very shortly as N1243. This document will be discussed at >the special meeting of the Development Body on Wednesday evening in Las >Vegas, when I shall expect the DB to provide recommendations to the full WG >in the form of draft resolutions as to what should be done next. These >draft resolutions will be discussed by the full WG during preliminary >resolution processing on Thursday. > >In order to expedite the discussions on the Wednesday evening, I have been >asked to conduct an informal review of the document by electronic mail, so >that everyone, including those who cannot attend the Las Vegas meeting, >will be able to contribute their opinions. > [snip] > >Informal Ballot on N1243 (Draft Standard for Conditional Compilation in >Fortran) > > __________ >I believe that the current draft is ready for | YES | NO | >submission to SC22 for its first CD ballot |_____|__X_| > > >If NO, please provide details of what changes you wish to see made in order >that the document will be suitable for submission to SC22 for balloting. > > >(signed) Craig T. Dedo............. > >(date) February 6, 1997.......... Although this is late, I will hope that you will take this anyway. It has been a VERY busy week. Reason for voting NO at this time (I hope that this will change): This discussion repeats some comments that I made a year ago during the development of the Fortran-like CoCo. I am VERY strongly opposed to the use of ERROR to combine the functionality of the standard Fortran PRINT and STOP statements. This usage is contrary to the spirit of the Fortran-like CoCo project, i.e., to create a Conditional Compilation capability that has the look-and-feel of Fortran. Using the ERROR statement to combine the functions of the STOP and PRINT statements violates the Principle of Least Surprise. It also violates what I consider to be one of the most important design principles of Fortran; namely, the syntax is simple, straightforward, and understandable. It contains few if any nasty surprises and gotchas. I suggest an alternative. Why not simply use the existing Fortran STOP statement? It is already well defined and clearly understood. In CoCo, it could be defined to mean that there is no compilation but CoCo processing continues until the end of the input stream. We should also include a PRINT directive as a supplement to, NOT a replacement for STOP. There may very well be situations in which the programmer wants to print out messages without stopping compilation. For example, printing out a message saying what platform this particular compilation is for. Also, there are probably a lot of cases that no one has thought of yet. I do NOT believe that there is anything wrong with having the CoCo pre-compiler perform auxiliary tasks such as printing messages in addition to its main task of conditional compilation. ---------- Sincerely, Craig T. Dedo Internet: Craig.Dedo@mixcom.com Elmbrook Computer Services Voice Phone: (414) 783-5869 17130 W. Burleigh Place Brookfield, WI 53005 Disclaimer: These opinions are mine alone. USA They do NOT represent any organization. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin (1759)