From vsnyder@vanpc.jpl.nasa.gov  Tue Jun  6 19:55:20 2000
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Subject: N1385 AFNOR proposal for August WG5 meeting
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Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2000 11:00:45 -0700
From: Van Snyder <vsnyder@vanpc.jpl.nasa.gov>


I wrote:

> In N1385, the French Fortran committee (AFNOR) propose to add XDR to
> the list of forms allowed for a file.
> 
> I don't know XDR well enough to answer the question whether BACKSPACE
> would be possible for XDR-formatted files.  If not, some more work
> would be needed for the AFNOR proposal.

and Robert Corbett replied:

! An interesting point.  XDR presents data as a byte stream, so I suppose
! a BACKSPACE statement could simply back up the file position one byte.

This is different from the semantics of BACKSPACE in Fortran.  Therefore,
the AFNOR proposal is not complete.  The only viable completion is to
prohibit BACKSPACE for files opened with FORM='XDR'.  There may be other
editorial problems -- e.g. the standard may say "not formatted" instead
of "unformatted" in some places.  These must be tracked down and changed
to "not formatted and not XDR".  It may turn out that there aren't any
such places, but one needs to be convinced.  The potential for an
interaction with ACCESS='STREAM' also needs to be examined.

In any case, J3 is already overloaded, and shrinking.  It is unlikely that
adding to the work load will accelerate the schedule.

Best regards,
Van Snyder