(j3.2006) (SC22WG5.4650) [ukfortran] AW: Vote on N1904

[N.M. Maclaren]

On Mar 15 2012, Malcolm Cohen wrote:
>
>>It was that MPI receive buffers are a well-known example of where
>>output-only assumed-type arguments are needed.  While there is no
>>difficulty in using INTENT(INOUT) or no INTENT, having to specify
>>something other than what you intend is poor software engineering.
>
> I agree, but we intend TYPE(*) to be poorly engineered in any case (see 
> much lower down re void*).

Agreed.

>Bill Long wrote:
>> I agree it is overkill, but for such a narrowly focused feature as 
>> TYPE(*), I think that is an acceptable trade-off.
>
> Contrariwise, I think the big hammer is the smallest reasonable change 
> that is consistent with our "void *" intent. If we ever want to ease the 
> restriction, we probably need to drop the "void *" idea...

I can see that I don't have much support :-)  However, I do think that a
very short NOTE summarising your arguments would help poor, naive C
programmers who might mistakenly get the impression that Fortran doesn't
support output-only assumed-type arguments.  That would be easy to write.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.