One of my compilers was perfectly happy to accept an optional dummy
argument as an I/O specifier, viz. "advance=adv", where "adv" was
an optional dummy argument.
Furthermore, if the actual argument associated with "adv" was not
present, the run-time was perfectly happy to pretend I hadn't
specified "advance=".
I found this to be rather elegant, but I suspect it isn't standard-
conforming behavior. The section on I/O statements is quite large,
however, so I'm not sure whether there's something therein that defines
specifier values or variables to behave like actual arguments associated
with optional dummy arguments, and I missed it, or there's nothing
there.
Do you know the answer?
Best regards,
Van Snyder
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