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Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 15:30:17 -0500
From: Dick Hendrickson <dick.hendrickson@att.net>
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Subject: Re: (SC22WG5.3037) Statement separation/termination
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Richard Maine wrote:
> 
> Malcolm Cohen writes:
>  > Walt Brainerd said:
>  > >    X = Y &
>  > >    ; P = Q
> 
>  > The original text of 3.3.1.2 was somewhat unclear, and in any case was
>  > altered by interpretation 121, which I believe was included in
>  > corrigendum 3.
> ...
>  >      A ";"
>  >      must not appear as the first nonblank character on a line.'
> 
> Ah.  I'd forgotten that this was an f90 interp; thought it was an
> f95 one.   Since we apparently don't have an inconsistency between
> f90 (with corrigenda applied), f95, and f2k, I now agree that this
> wouldn't be something to fix in the fcd public comment stage.  It
> isn't an error, it isn't an incompatibility, and it isn't new.
> I had advised Walt to submit it as a proposed fcd comment based
> on my mistaken belief that it was an f90 incompatibility.
> 
> I still do think this is a silly restriction that ought to be fixed
> in the next release after f2003.  The restriction just doesn't make
> any sense.  It doesn't follow from any of the preceding discussion
> in the interp.
> 

I think the restriction against a leading ";" was a reaction to 
some discussions, either on the J3 e-mail list or in 
comp.lang.fortran about what a null statement would be.  
Section 3 says things like "The ";" terminates a statement..."
and that implies that a leading ";" terminates an empty statement.
But, the BNF doesn't allow for an empty statement.  And we'll need
to be careful with IF statements and labeled statements if we try
allow empty statements.  It's awkward to get the words right.

Dick Hendrickson