For once Walt I think you may be also missing the point that is being made.
Perhaps we should be thinking of the regularisation that considers procedures
as just another type of object that is decared, and in somecases defined at
the same time.
I hate to bring it back up but the most regular language I ever used was
Algol68 and procedure declarations were syntactically identical to
declarations of any other object. This made the language very easy to learn
and very easy to read as well as powerful, flexible and efficient.
We do have a problem in Fortran in that the syntax of the function definition
is not that of a function declaration. A function declaration as such is part
of an interface block where we have another set of irregular syntactic rules.
Regularising this whole area is a laudable aim but not an easy one if you
want to maintain backwards compatibility.
On Wed, 25 Mar 1998 14:04:16 -0700 (MST) Walt Brainerd <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Van Snyder wrote:
>
> ===
> To make the symmetry more complete, every entity declaration should
> allow :: before the entity, and every specifiable attribute of the
> entity should be allowed in a comma-separated list before ::, viz.
>
> TYPE(MyType), RECURSIVE, ALLOCATABLE, DIMENSION(10), PUBLIC, &
> RESULT(MyResult), FUNCTION :: MyFunc ( ... ) ... END FUNCTION MyFunc
> ===
>
> I think the point some of us (at least me) were trying to make is
> that we don't regard the FUNCTION statement as an entity declaration.
>
> Walt Brainerd [log in to unmask]
> Unicomp, Inc. +1-505-797-8989 856-1501 (fax)
> 1874 San Bernardino Ave NE +1-500-Fortran (367-8726)
> Albuquerque, NM 87122 USA http://www.fortran.com/fortran
--
Lawrie Schonfelder
Director, Computing Services Dept.
The University of Liverpool, UK, L69 7ZF
Phone: 44(151)794 3716, Fax: 44(151)794 3759
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|