(j3.2006) [Fwd: Fortran 2008 query]

[Van Snyder]

On Fri, 2017-10-27 at 16:43 +0000, Clune, Thomas L. (GSFC-6101) wrote:
> I have no problem with going for a specific value rather than
> ?unlimited?.  (Though I am interested in responses to Van?s point
> about other ?unlimited? things such as lines in a module.)
> 
> I would, however, push to be ?out ahead? of the issue rather than
> simply making the line length sufficient for existing use cases.
> History suggests that the requirements for such things do grow over
> time.    For my immediate use cases  512 characters would be
> sufficient.   I would like to see at least a 2x safety factor on that
> though, so 1024 (or above) would have my vote.   

I already have programs for which 1024 is too small by a factor of
seven, so it's not "out ahead" of existing use cases.  What's wrong
with, say, 99999?  That's 13 MB, which is not going to strain any
existing compiler's platform.  And I'm pretty sure that a compiler could
exploit dynamic memory so as not to have such a buffer "lying around."