-----Original Message-----
From: Fortran 90 List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Walt Brainerd
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2004 8:48 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Data type "UNDEFINED"
[...] It is simply because X3J3
did not want to fix the relationship between the amount of storage
occupied by a character and that of a real or integer. (Doing that
with logicals many years ago forces each default logical to be stored
in way more space than is needed.)
[...]
But then, when KIND was introduced, none of the compilers (so far as I know) implemented a one-bit logical KIND.
Maybe just because there's no hardware nowadays that knows how to address fewer than 8 bits at a time.
And I think in the early days, the "word" occupied by a default integer was usually the smallest addressable storage unit. (Was IBM
360 the first byte-addressable machine?)
Loren P Meissner
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