On Oct 17, 2005, at 1:07 AM, O'Brien Paddy wrote:

> The repeat factor which is available in DATA statements is not 
> available in array constructors...
> Is there a particular reason that the repeat factor has been excluded?

The syntax of DATA statements is generally quite quirky. It is 
completely different from the syntax of anything else and, in general, 
doesn't work out well in other contexts. That is one reason that I 
generally avoid DATA statements, but on occasion there are things that 
just turn out to be difficult to do any other way.

The repeat factor is one cause of some of the oddities in DATA 
statement syntax. Consider something like

    6*7

In any context other than a DATA statement, that means 6 times 7. The 
DATA statement does not allow arithmetic, even the most trivial cases 
like that. Pretty much every other context does allow arithmetic and 
thus, repeat factors wouldn't work. Certainly 6*7 is a perfectly valid 
value for an array constructor element, for example. One could perhaps 
start defining a lot of special-case rules for when 6*7 meant 
multiplication and when it meant repeats, but that would get very 
complicated very fast - I can't imagine that being a good road to go 
down.

As Mike says, you can use implied DO loops. They are quite a bit 
wordier, I realize, but they ought to work for the purpose.

Much more painful in terms of replacing DATA statements is figuring out 
what to do for cases where you want only part of an object initialized. 
This can come up in many ways, one of the most vexing being when the 
object is of a type that does not allow initialization of some 
components. Sometimes there just isn't a way to do this other than with 
a DATA statement or an executable statement.

-- 
Richard Maine                |  Good judgment comes from experience;
[log in to unmask]       |  experience comes from bad judgment.
                             |        -- Mark Twain