(j3.2006) Interesting F2003-ism

[Aleksandar Donev]

Dan Nagle wrote:

> You're simply making the point that a better abstraction for arrays
> would be helpful in some situations.
I agree...with Van etc...but I was not talking about changing anything 
in Fortran 2008 (which can keep its 20-year old array abstractions if it 
thinks that's sufficient...at least it has co-arrays which is a major 
step forward in itself).

Using the (proposed) Interop TR it is *trivial* to write a single C 
routine that handles arrays of different TKRs (this will usually be a 
wrapper itself, calling lower level routines or Fortran-ignorant C 
libraries). Is this a bad thing and something that we should forbid by 
rules in clause 16 that have a completely different intention???? Or 
should we finally give this ability to all the computational scientists 
that are trying to develop Fortran interfaces to their libraries, hating 
Fortran more and more the more they try to interoperate with it?!?

I am not asking that the same (write a single routine that handles 
arrays of different TKRs) be true in Fortran. I don't believe Interop is 
a symmetric operation. It is the attempt to make sure that everything 
written in interoperable C can be written in Fortran and vice versa that 
is the pointless excercise in needless restrictions.

Aleks