(j3.2006) Public Comment J32035

[Jim Giles]

Aleksandar Donev wrote:
> On Tuesday 15 July 2008 15:14, Jim Giles wrote:
> 
>> I think all of what you want would be better accomodated by
>> allowing so-called "assumed rank arrays".
> I proposed this for F2008 [it was called DIMENSION()], and it got
> rejected :-\ 
...
> I also proposed this (I believe I proposed some kind of attribute for
> the dummy, like SCALAR, but even I forgot). Again, it got rejected.
> It may have even been what inspired Malcolm to propose IMPURE, if my
> memory serves me right. BTW, Van has even proposed your specific
> syntax "accumulate(shape(a))" [and I supported it very much], but
> again, it got rejected. 
> 
> Anyway, IMPURE did get accepted. It is not perfect nor as good as the
> above. But it helps ELEMENTAL become more useful (albeit not fully
> functional). 

I don't agree that it's a good design practice to accept weak second-best
features if your real preference is not accepted.  I think that leads to 
clumsy, verbose, and unnecessarily complex languages.  People will
correctly abandon them.  In most cases it's better not to get any new
feature at all than to get a hamstrung, poorly designed, partial subset 
that also mangles what should be separate features.

J. Giles