(j3.2006) What does "same image" mean?

[John Reid]

Steven,

I would say that this behaviour does not conform, but there does appear 
to be an ambiguity. Should we add "on the same processor" at the 
sentence end so that it reads "If it (the argument repeatable) has the 
value true, the seed accessed by the pseudorandom number generator is 
set to a processor-dependent value that is the same each time 
RANDOM_INIT is called from the same image on the same processor."?

John Reid.



Steven G. Kargl wrote:
> Bill,
>
> I agree with your assessment with the observation that I'm
> concern with what a mere mortal user thinks the standard
> says.  As far as I know, the following conforms
>
> program foo
>    real x(3)
>    call random_init(.true., .false.)
>    call random_number(x)
>    write(*,'(3F15.7)') x
> end program foo
>
> % gfcx -o z c.f90
> % ./z
>       0.9166497      0.0343677      0.9250018
> % ./z
>       0.3294057      0.3634282      0.6506106
> % ./z
>       0.8441532      0.5690981      0.7679952
>
> but, is this what a user expects and wants?  As the person that
> made 'call RANDOM_SEED()' return the same sequence of RN with
> gfortran, I am well aware that a number of users were unhappy
> because other vendors choose a different behavior.
>