British Computer Society Fortran Specialist Group

Minutes of a meeting held on 5th May, 1975

at the Royal Overseas League, Park Place,

St. James Street, London, S.W.1

Present:   Mr. D. T. Muxworthy (Chairman)        University of Edinburgh

Mr. E. O. Bodger (vice-chairman)      IBM W.T. Systems Aid Centre

Dr. J. C. Baldwin                     University College Cardiff

Mr. B. J. Banes                       RollsRoyce, Bristol Engine Divn.

Mr. P. D. Bond                        Philips Industries

Mr. B. C. Chapman                     Honeywell Le. Ltd Hemel Hempstead

Mr. J. C. Cullen                      B.P.

Mr. D. Ellison                        University of Manchester R.C.C.

Mr. D. Hill                           Micro Computer Systems Ltd.

Mr. J. P. Holland                     Thames Water Authority

Mr. M. J. King                        B.B.C.

Mr. D. J. Maisey                      I.C.L.

Mr. J. A. Morice                      Mullard Research Labs.

Mr. T. L. van Raalte                  Ministry of Defence A.W.R.E.

Mr. R. W. S. Rodwell                  I.C.L.

Mr. R. G. Trout                       Atkins Computing

Mr. P. A. Clarke (Secretary)          Rothamsted Experimental Station

Apologies for absence:

Mrs. E. Aylmer-Kelly                  University of York

Dr. A. C. Day                         U.C.L.

Mr. P. M. S. Kraven                   Seismograph Service Ltd.

1.   Approval of Minutes

The minutes of the meeting held on the 7th March 1975 were approved

subject to the following corrections. In section 2 'said the Dr. Day

should read 'said that Dr. Day', in section 5 'CODSYL' should read

'CODASYL', in section 9(a) 'meeting of X3J3 minutes of 8/11/74,

(Appendix B)' should read 'meeting of X3J3 (see Appendix B of the

minutes of 8/11/74)', in section 10 'correspondince' should read

'correspondence'.  In Appendix B, the Vice-Chairman's telephone number

should be given as 01-866-0101.

2.   Matters arising from Minutes                                             ACTION

(a)  Mr. Muxworthy had booked a room for about 70 people at Datafair '75.

Mr. Bodger and others asked if there would be any admission charge

and expressed the hope that there would not be one.                      D.T.M.

(b)  The member survey was not complete. Many members submitted their

returns at the meeting. A summary was requested (see Appendix C)

for further discussion                                                   P.A.C.

3.   Datafair 75

The exact form of the meeting to be held at Datafair 75 was not

formalised, but the general concensus was in favour of an ordinary

meeting with some part of the time given to a speaker or speakers on

the topic of current implementations. It was left to Mr. Muxworthy

to finalise some verbal agreements with speakers.                        D.T.M.

4.   Future activities for the Group

An ad-hoc summary of topics of interest indicated by the member survey

was made.

Several of the members present indicated that the duration of meetings

should be extended to a full day as their travelling times necessitated

a full days absence from work, even for a morning-only meeting.

Mr. Clarke displayed a map showing the locations of members based on the

circulation list. About forty members live within easy travelling

distance of London. This is about half of the membership. About

eleven members live in the locality of Edinburgh, six near Manchester

and three in the South West (Bristol, Cardiff).

5.   CODASYL Fortran DBMLC activities

A preliminary draft of the syntax of the proposed DML statements has been

received from Mr. J. B. McLean (U.S. Air Force) and a second drafting is

expected shortly, following recent meetings. Three meetings have been

held, one in Feb. 75 at Baton Rouge, La., hosted by J. Tyler (Luisiana

State University), one in April 75 at Washington, D.C., hosted by

Ann Bandurski (U.S. Navy), and one in May 75 at Minneapolis, Minn ,

hosted by T. Harris (Univac). Copies of the draft documents are available

on request.

6.   ANSI X3J3 activities

(a)  Reply to B.C.S. Fortran specialist Group.

Mr. J. C. Noll's reply (See Appendix B) to the last set of comments was

read. His reply was based on the revised FORTREV/65(75-04-01) document

and two of the three comments submitted had been dealt with by the

revisions.

(b)  Decisions taken at recent meetings

The decisions taken at the January 75 meeting of X3J3 were discussed.

It was noticed that FORTREV/65 (75-04-01) contains a substantial number

of revisions which have been made since the January 75 issue.

(c)  Other points

Members discussed FORTREV/65 and paid particular attention to incompat-

ibilities with the old standard. As a result of the discussion, some

comments were sent to X3J3 (see Appendix A).

7.   Any Other Business

(a)  Following discussions on standard conforming programs, Dr. Baldwin asked

if there was any mechanical means of ensuring that programs are standard

conforming. Mr. Ellison pointed out that the Manchester 1906 compiler

produces messages which indicate violation of the standard. Mr. Morice

said that he was in the process of implementing the PFORT verifier

obtained from E. G. Ryder, Bell Labs (see Software Practice and

Experience Vol 4 No 4 Oct-Dec 74) and that he was willing to report his

progress to the group. The verifier is itself written in standard Fortran

with some minor exceptions and can perform some semantic checking as well

as syntax checking.

(b)  Mr. Muxworthy drew attention to the activities of the American structured

Fortran Working Group and the paper by Dr. L. P. Meissner on extending

Fortran control structures. He indicated that the Group were hoping to

form a Fortran Development Committee to act on behalf of the ACM SIGPLAN

to help speed up Fortran language developments and ANSI revisions and

to draw upon interest from the existing groups, such as the Industrial

Fortran Group, the Data Base Management Group in CODASYL, the National

Bureau of Standards and other interested parties such as SHARE.

Copies of the FORWORD Fortran Development Newsletters and Dr. Meissner's

paper are available on request.

(c)  It was with regret that Mr. Muxworthy announced that Mr. J. S. Gatehouse

the founder member, and the first chairman of the Group felt that it was

unlikely that he would be able to make any contribution in future and

was withdrawing his membership. The members present wished to thank

Mr. Gatehouse for the part he had played in the formation of the Group.

(d)  The annual report was due to be submitted to the B.C.S. (see Appendix D).

8.   Date of Next Meeting

The next meeting will be held on l September 1975.

[In the original typescript Appendix C (2½ pages) preceded Appendices A, B & D
(each 1 page) in order to save paper (and possibly postage costs)]

APPENDIX C

  Summary of Returns of Member Survey forms

Twelve returns were received from about 120 members. Only 3 of the returns

were by post. The remainder were collected at the meeting. This summary

therefore gives a heavy bias in favour of those living near London and able

to attend meetings on Monday mornings.

1.        Venues chosen

Verbal offers of accommodation have been made for Bristol or Cardiff,

Sheffield, London and Edinburgh.

2. Topics Chosen

These varied from fairly general to highly specific. An attempt has been made

to summarise these, but to avoid the bias in summarisation, the full list is

given, and alternative summaries would be welcomed.

Complete Table

Summary Table

Note that Ref 4' As at present' has not been included.

It appears that there is more interest in programming techniques than has been

catered for in the past. This would be particularly so if programming

techniques and Applications were classified together (as applications

programming techniques). This probably reflects the fact that many members are

involved in applications.

3. Days and Times Chosen

Notes  a.m. was taken to mean 'morning only'.

 10.30 a.m. was taken to mean 'morning at ]east.

It appears that any weekday (with slight preference to Friday) combined with

morning starting about 10.30 or 11.00 a.m. would suit the majority, with the

possibility of the afternoon being provided as well.

4.   Only one other suggestion was made:

Is it possible to have subgroups meeting outside London?

5.   Datafair 75 - call for presentations

There were no offers to give presentations at Datafair 75.

APPENDIX A to Minutes of Meeting of 5 May, 1975

From:     British Computer Society, Fortran Specialist Group

To:       ANSI X3J3

Date:     9th May, 1975

Subject:  Comments on Items Under Discussion

The comments relate to X3J3/65 FORTREV (75-04-01) and to the

decisions taken at the November 1974 and January 1975 X3J3

meetings.

Members of the group were concerned at the increase in known

conflicts with the 1966 standard, in particular, in section 19.1.1:

1a.  Item (7)  should not be in the list because it was merely

defining something that had not been defined

earlier. There was no conflict with the language

defined previously. There may or may not be con-

flict with existing implementations.

1b.  Item (6)  Rescinding the facility of reading into a Hollerith

descriptor in a FORMAT statement was not absolutely

necessary. What were the reasons for this?

2.   We also thought that item (4) in section 19.1.2 was unneces-

sary and generally contrary to former practice relating to

messages. It also seems to imply FORMAT checking at com-

pile time.

3.   Item (2)  in section 19.2 caused two reactions: a collating

sequence for the Fortran character set should be

defined or the relational operators in character

relational expressions should be restricted to

.EQ. and .NE.

4.   Section 19.4 seemed unnecessary. We prefer blank line

to be treated as a comment line rather than as an initial

line of a statement.

Bell Laboratories

Holmdel, New Jersey 07733

Phone (701) 949-3000

Appendix B          April 11, 1975

Alan Clarke

Sec. BCS Fortran Specialist Group

Rothamsted Experimental Station

Harpenden, Hertfordshire

England

Dear Mr. Clarke,

Under separate cover you have been sent a copy of two letter

ballots X3J3/63 and X3J3/64 which concern X3J3/65 FORTREV

(75-04-01). Although your comments on FORTREV are

"unofficial" they are very welcome and carry considerable

weight. Indeed you should notice changes in FORTREV as the

result of comments by the British Specialist Group.

Now for comments on your questions of April 3, 1975:

Q1.  Is it possible to use T1 or -NX format specifications

to allow overwriting of printer control characters?

A1.  Yes. In effect the buffer is filled with blanks then

filled by format editing (including T & X edit) and

cannot be released reliably for transmission until

the end of record is reached.

Q2.  What method should be used to position a sequence of

files at the initial point? How do you find the

terminal point?

A2.  Use REWIND to find the initial point. Note that the

concept "sequence of sequential files" has been

removed from FORTREV/65.

In effect "multi-file files" has not been

standardized and you need to know more about the file

than FORTREV specifies in order to use "multi-file

files" or to find the terminal point of such a file.

Your proposals for standardization are welcome.

Q3.  Is backspace allowed in records which were written

sequentially to files containing mixed sequential and

free-field files?

A3.  Backspacing over records written with list-directed

formatting is not permitted (FORTREV/65 12.10.4.3).

Very truly yours,

HO-8223-JCN-mah                            J. C. Noll

Member X3J3

Copy to

F. Engel - Chairman X3J3

Att.

U.S.C

Appendix D

BCS FORTRAN SPECIALIST GROUP ANNUAL REPORT 1974-75

1.   As in previous years, the main activity of the Group has been liaising

with the Fortran committee, X3J3, of the American National Standard

Institute in their drafting of a new Standard for Fortran. Also, as in

previous years, the draft is expected to be published next year. This

time it really is possible as the draft standard exists in a complete

form which will be final if it survives unchanged the various rounds of

voting.

2.   The Group has continued its contacts with the Fortran committee of the

European Computer Manufacturers Association and has been strongly

represented on the Programming Language Committee of the British

Standards Institute.

3.   The Group has discussed many other matters related to Fortran and has

taken a positive interest in the Society's affairs. In particular a

meeting which was addressed by the BCS President and at which a

presentation on ICL 2900 Fortran was given by D.J. Maisey was attended by

46 people, a record for the Group.

4.   There have been 6 meetings during the year with an average attendance of

24; there are about 110 people on the Group's mailing list of whom 15

live outside the U.K. In January D.T. Muxworthy succeeded B.H. Shearing

as Chairman, P.A. Clarke succeeded Muxworthy as Secretary and E.O. Bodger

was elected Vice-Chairman.