From malcolm@nag.co.uk Wed Aug 12 11:17:58 1998 Received: from red.nag.co.uk ([192.156.217.2]) by dkuug.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id LAA00709 for ; Wed, 12 Aug 1998 11:17:37 +0200 Received: from sedi8.nag.co.uk by red.nag.co.uk via SMTP (920330.SGI/920502.SGI) for SC22WG5@dkuug.dk id AA16265; Wed, 12 Aug 98 10:16:06 +0100 Received: by sedi8.nag.co.uk (920330.SGI/920502.SGI) for @red.nag.co.uk:SC22WG5@dkuug.dk id AA15645; Wed, 12 Aug 98 10:15:49 +0100 From: malcolm@nag.co.uk (Malcolm Cohen) Message-Id: <9808120915.AA15645@sedi8.nag.co.uk> Subject: Re: String standard, module and F95 To: SC22WG5@dkuug.dk Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 10:15:47 +0000 (BST) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1241 Lawrie complains about the restriction, for ELEMENTAL procedures, that dummy arguments cannot appear in specification expressions (other than in certain very limited contexts) - in particular, they cannot be used to dimension automatic arrays. I agree with Lawrie that this restriction is (a) unnecessary (b) not useful (c) irritating I don't agree that it is "entirely unfathomable" though - the reasons for doing this were made clear, even if one disagrees with them. In any case it does not prevent the SPLIT subroutine being made elemental, since ALLOCATABLE arrays are allowed in ELEMENTAL procedures. Using an ALLOCATABLE array instead of an automatic array should not cause any loss of machine efficiency, and only a slight loss of programmer efficiency other than the irritation caused by getting an error message for the original attempt using an automatic array - of course this latter part could be substantial! Anway, since the conversion is so straightforward, it rather begs the question of why not let the compiler effectively do the conversion (when needed) instead of requiring it of the user. Cheers, -- ...........................Malcolm Cohen, NAG Ltd., Oxford, U.K. (malcolm@nag.co.uk)