(j3.2006) Public Comment J32028

[Michael Ingrassia]

                                                           08-242
To: J3
From: Michael Ingrassia
Subject: Public Comment J32028
Date: 2008 July 08
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Commenter's Subject was "the EXTERNAL attribute"

Paragraph 4 of Section 12.5.2.9 of the Fortran 2008
draft states

     If an external procedure name or dummy procedure
     name is used as an actual argument, its interface
     shall be explicit or it shall be explicitly
     declared to have the EXPLICIT attribute.

That statement gets the condition exactly right.

Paragraph 2 of Section 5.3.9 states

     If an external procedure or dummy procedure is
     used as an actual argument or is the target of
     a procedure pointer assignment, it shall be
     declared to have the EXTERNAL attribute.

That statement is not as good as the previous
statement.  It introduces an ambiguity that is not
in the previous statement, regarding what
constitutes being "declared to have the EXTERNAL
attribute."  That ambiguity has led to several
statements regarding the EXTERNAL attribute to be
added to Chapter 12 of the draft standard.  That
work has made the standard longer for no
particular good.  Furthermore, there are still
important cases that have been missed.

I suggest deleting paragraph 2 of Section 5.3.9.
I suggest adding the statement

     If an external procedure name or dummy procedure
     name is the target of a procedure pointer
     assignment, its interface shall be explicit or
     it shall be explicitly declared to have the
     EXPLICIT attribute.

to Section 7.2.2.4.


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