Russell, Richard wrote:
...
> I imagine that this proposal:
>
> a)Is easily shot down.
> b)Was proposed before (and shot down).
> c)Has some merit and will generate a lengthy thread also.
Well, it's not otherwise called UNDEFINED, but it is
part of what you can do with generics. You declare your
procedure is genric with respect to a given argument's
type. Since you don't actually do anything at all with
those arguments except to pass them further along, that's
all you would really need to do. You can actually
do something of the sort with features already in F2003.
The CLASS(*) declaration declares what you're calling
the UNDEFINED type. It declares an object and allows
you to further pass it around to other procedures, but
doesn't care what its actual type is, what it contains,
nad doesn't allow you to do anything else with it other
than to just pass it along
Actually, I think you may be allowed to do things with it
if you test it with the SELETC TYPE construct and find
that it's a type that you know how to handle. That's beyond
the capability you asked for though.
--
J. Giles
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