(j3.2006) A few constants from ISO_Fortran_env for C interop

[Bill Long]

On 10/24/11 2:53 PM, Van Snyder wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2011-10-24 at 12:00 -0700, Bill Long wrote:
>> Alternatively, a user-written module, that has a USE of
>> ISO_Fortran_env, could be supplied that declared bind(c) variables
>> that were initialized to these constants.  Then the C user could just
>> reference the variables directly.   You might name them Fortran_stdout
>> and Fortran_stderr, for example.
>
> The variables aren't constants that a C function can use for
> initialization.  So this is a little better than (or not quite as good
> as, depending upon your viewpoint) using a BIND(C) subroutine to set the
> values.
>

I don't see how initialization in C is relevant here.  The C programmer 
is only going to pass these values back to a Fortran program as actual 
arguments in calls.  The numerical values of the unit numbers are 
pointless to a C programmer.

> Fortran programmers have maybe been spoiled by having default
> initialization.
>

And also lead to poor programming practice through excessive use of 
default initialization. Particularly of components.

> I don't see enough C code to know how comfortable the average C
> programmer is with instructions to call several initialization functions
> before calling the one that does what he actually wants done.  Is it

The global variables avoid that problem.  No initialization functions 
involved.

Cheers,
Bill


> common and tolerated, and recognized that failing to do the
> initialization properly is a source for obscure bugs?
>
>
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-- 
Bill Long                                           longb at cray.com
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