(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
Fortran Technical Suport  &                                  voice:  651-605-9024
Bioinformatics Software Development                     fax:  651-605-9142
Cray Inc./ Cray Plaza, Suite 210/ 380 Jackson St./ St. Paul, MN 55101





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