Subject: hpff-core: FYI - F95 Comment Response

From: Mary E Zosel <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 15:08:22 -0800

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Here is the official response back from X3J3 about the HPFF
input to F95 Public Comment.
   -mz-

===========================

High Performance Fortran Forum
c/o Mary Zosel
Lawrence Livermore Natl. Lab
7000 East Ave.
P.O. Box 808
Livermore, CA   94550

To: High Performance Fortran Forum

Thank you for submitting comments on the public review draft of the Fortran 95 
international standard.  Such comments are extremely important in addressing 
errors of both omission and commission in the proposed standard.

The national and international Fortran standards bodies have considered the 
points in your comment letter and in comments from others worldwide.  The 
following responses address your specific comments:

Missing Features
----------------
Numerical exception handling and interfaces to non-Fortran code are the 
subjects of proposed technical reports scheduled for completion within the 
next two years.  These features would also be included in the next revision of 
the Fortran standard.  Asynchronous I/O  is being considered as a priority 
item for inclusion in the next revision of the standard.

Item #1. Allocatable Arrays in PURE Functions
---------------------------------------------
It was decided not to add a note about allocatable arrays in PURE functions 
having side-effects.  There is the potential for allocation in an instance of 
a PURE function to fail due to insufficient memory, depending on the order of 
invocation of the other instances.  This is a problem and a potential side-
effect, but it is more a case of program interaction with the underlying 
hardware/operating system than a language issue.  There is a similar problem 
with automatic arrays, or even automatic scalar variables, causing a memory 
overflow as the invocation order changes.  There is even the possibility of a 
"time-limit" abort if the invocation order causes "excessive" memory bank 
conflicts.

Item #2. Restrictions on Elemental Procedures
---------------------------------------------
Both an example and a note have been added to this section.

Item #3. Pointer arguments to PURE functions
--------------------------------------------
No change was made.  The intent of the notes was to give a high level summary 
of PURE procedures.  The use of POINTER arguments to PURE functions will be 
unlikely enough that summarizing their constraints would be more confusing 
than helpful.

Thank you again for your comments and your interest in Fortran 
standardization.

Sincerely,

Jerrold L. Wagener
X3J3 chair

cc: X3 Secretariat, [email-masked]

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