(j3.2006) LinkedIn Question re Why TYPEALIAS Not in Fortran 2003
Bill Long
longb
Mon Jan 27 08:00:09 EST 2014
On Jan 25, 2014, at 8:01 PM, Van Snyder <van.snyder at jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
> On Sat, 2014-01-25 at 18:48 -0600, Craig Dedo wrote:
>> Everyone:
>>
>> Today in the LinkedIn Fortran Programmers Group, Espen
>> Myklebust posted this question.
>>
>> [Begin post]
>>
>> I came by a pdf with the committee draft of the F03 standard, and in
>> there I see a TYPEALIAS statement that must have been dropped quite
>> late in the process.
>>
>> Does anyone with (inside) knowledge about that process care to comment
>> on why it didn't make it into the final F03 standard?
>>
>> [End of post]
>>
>>
>>
>> I have forgotten why TYPEALIAS was dropped late in the
>> process. Does anyone remember why this happened?
>
> 1. It was the wrong thing to do. New types (not synonymns) are more
> useful, and can do everything that type aliases can do -- but not vice
> versa.
>
Certainly not true. You cannot make a new intrinsic type, which leads to clumsy hacks when trying to map typedefs in C.
> 2. The material in the draft was wrong.
>
True.
> 3. We didn't have time, interest, or energy to make it right.
>
This was 90% + of the reason it was dropped. Some vendors left the feature in compilers, and it is still used today. Unfortunately, it is not portable.
Cheers,
Bill
>>
>>
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Craig T. Dedo
>>
>> 17130 W. Burleigh Place
>>
>> P. O. Box 423 Mobile Phone: (414) 412-5869
>>
>> Brookfield, WI 53008-0423 E-mail: <craig at ctdedo.com>
>>
>> USA
>>
>> Linked-In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/craigdedo
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
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Bill Long longb at cray.com
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