(j3.2006) (SC22WG5.4893) Comment on a comment on the WG5 letter ballot on N1947

[Ian Chivers]

I can't find Bill's original post. It may have been marked as spam
by my email provider. Could someone send the complete text of Bill's post?

I want to see the complete post before replying.

Thanks

Ian Chivers

-----Original Message-----
From: j3-bounces at mailman.j3-fortran.org
[mailto:j3-bounces at mailman.j3-fortran.org] On Behalf Of N.M. Maclaren
Sent: 13 January 2013 19:08
To: WG5
Subject: (j3.2006) (SC22WG5.4893) Comment on a comment on the WG5 letter
ballot on N1947

This is irrelevant to the vote, and is NOT intended to be added to it, but
might be considered by the editor and vulnerabilities group.  I am merely
dissenting from one technical point.

Bill Long wrote:
>
> Page 42, Fortran.58.1, bullet 1: Unless you go to absurd lengths, 
> detecting integer overflow is only practical if there is hardware 
> support for this capability. Requiring this level of hardware design 
> is generally outside the scope of the language standard.  Unless this 
> is a proposal for an IEEE standard, I would prefer that it be removed 
> from this section.

This is overstated, because hardware support is NOT needed, and the feature
is specified by at least Cobol.  It does degrade performance, though by much
less than is usually claimed, as has been found in many
compilers on many architectures.   There is a significant minority of
Fortran users who favour this facility being added, at least as an option.
All I am saying is that the requirement 'should be considered'
is reasonable.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.



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