BRITISH COMPUTER SOCIETY - FORTRAN SPECIALIST GROUP
Minutes of Meeting held at Birkbeck College on Monday 6 June 1983
Present: M R Dolbear - BP International, London
P M Flanders - ICL
Bill Flexner - Retired
D J Holmes - Rolls Royce Ltd; Bristol
C R Jesshope - Southampton University
Chris Lazou - ULCC
Heather Liddell - QMC
Mike Nunn - CCTA
Denis Parkinson - QMC
T L van Raalte - MOD
John Reid - Harwell
Andy Swarbrick - UMIST
M Taylor - NCC
Dave Vallance - Salford University
Alan Wilson - ICL
John Wilson - Leicester University
Address: Chairman - John Wilson
Computer Laboratory
University of Leicester
Leicester LE1 7RH
Secretary - Mike Nunn
CCTA
Riverwalk House
157 Millbank
London SW1P 5RT
Treasurer - T L van Raalte
Atomic Weapons Research Establishment
Aldermaston
Reading RG7 4PR
APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE
Apologies were received from David Muxworthy (Edinburgh University) and
Dr J L Schonfelder (Liverpool University).
1. MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING [11 April 1983]
Correction to Section 9 (X3J3 Progress):
Line 3 should read "It had been intended to take a vote on the draft
standard in May 1985 but this date is not firm."
2. MATTERS ARISING
i. "BRITISH STANDARD FORTRAN"
Brian Meek expressed concern with both the result of the Group's vote
on the BSI Fortran proposal called "Method of Specifying Requirements
for Fortran Language Processors" which he presented at the April
meeting and the reasons given in the minutes for the vote not being
in favour.
[Brian had asked for the Group's full support for the proposed stand-
card and that the Group should write a letter to the BSI OIS-1 Committee
noting the proposal had been made and that the Group supported it.
Brian had to leave the meeting early but the Group discussed his
proposal at some length and then a vote was taken. The result was a
rejection of the action he asked for by 5 votes to 4. Some of those
present had considered that a batter way forward would be for Brian
to publish his proposal in a reputable journal.]
Brian reported that despite the Group's vote the OIS/5 parent committee
have approved the project as a work item so it would go ahead. A
committee has been brought together under David Muxworthy's chairman-
ship to produce the UK standard. It would welcome assistance from
anyone interested, Although the working group (drafting committee)
wold be small they welcomed ideas from the Fortran community and
would particularly like to hear from people who were prepared to
comment on the draft. First meeting of the working group would be
14 June.
Therefore please can anyone able to comment on drafts contact either
Brian Meek, David Muxworthy or John Wilson.
ii. DOI FUNDING FOR FORTRAN COMPILER VALIDATION
John Wilson reported that he had received a reply to the letter he sent
Graham Craik of CCTA Standards Branch asking for DOI funding for a
certification scheme for Fortran 77 compilers on the same
lines as for Cobol. Negotiations were currently taxing place
between NCC (who run the Cobol scheme) and FCTC (the USA government's
Federal Compiler Testing Centre who develop the compiler
validation suites for Cobol and Fortran and who run the tests
and produce reports . The FCTC test suite version 1 was only able to
validate the subset language but version 2.0 released in July 1982
tests the full language. Although DOI have not yet given the go ahead
to funding the scheme, NCO have reached agreement with FCTC to use
their suite. M Taylor (NCC) said that his organisation were hoping to
start Fortran validations in August or September. Because FCTC were
snowed under with work, NCC as well as validating UK compilers might
also test some American ones in this country as well. Cost of
certifying a compiler would probably be about £2000. NCC expected to
need about a week to test each compiler - say 2 days on site and 3
days producing the report.
3. BCS BUSINESS
i. The Chairman was not sure what response David Fisher (Leicester
University) had received to the letter he sent to DOI seeking funding
for a regular X3J3 delegate but John Reid (Harwell) and Lawrie Schonfelder
(Liverpool Univ) were now attending X3J3 meetings regularly anyway.
M Taylor said that a NCC representative was also likely to attend future
X3J3 meetings.
ii. Coming BCS Fortran Specialist Group Meetings:
Date Afternoon Speaker Title of Talk
26 September 1983 Mike Metcalf (CERN) Fortran Optimisation
5 December 1983 Lawrie Schonfelder Derived Data Types
(Liverpool University)
27 February 1984 Steve Hague (NAG) An update to his
previous talk on Toolpak.
14 April 1984 AGM
iii. TREASURER'S REPORT
The Treasurer reported that a sum of £710.51 was still owed to the
previous Treasurer (Mr J Roberts-Jones). Attempts to make payment had
not met with success. A full statement of the Group's accounts is in
Non-BCS members are reminded that there is a £2 annual fee to be a
member of the Fortran Specialist Group. Outstanding cheques should
be made in favour of 'BCS Fortran Specialist Group' and sent to the
Treasurer.
The Group has asked BCS for its annual allocation to be increased from
£150 to £350. (Most of the money is used for the nailing list and room
hire.)
iv. BCS Secretariat have written to say that in future two pages will
be reserved in Computer Bulletin for Specialist Group activities. They
believe that Computing has not proved an idea forum for drawing attention
to meetings.
John Reid, representing the UK Atomic Energy Authority, has joined the X3J3
committee. He produces a report on their meetings for his organisation and
for the Group's benefit he summarised recent X3J3 activities which covered
event handling, derived data types, array processing, procedure calling,
construct names and structures. A complete report from John on the May
X3J3 meeting at Urbana is in appendix B. David Muxworthy also produced a
report on that meeting and because John believes that some items have been
covered more fully and some less fully by David and himself it might be best
for those particularly interested to read John's report together with pp1-4
of David's. (also in appendix B).
5. ANY OTHER BUSINESS
The Chairman reported he had sent an annual report on the Group's activities
to BCS. (see appendix C).
6. FORTRAN 8X ARRAY FACILITIES - DISCUSSION LED BY JOHN REID
John gave the following overview of the new 8X array facilities:
a. Specifications.
Types: Real, complex, integer, character,
logical
Dimensionality: Up to 7
Assumed shape: A(:, K) [new feature]
Assumed size: A(N, *) [obsolete ie may be deleted
next time]
b. Enquiry intrinsics.
Eg EXTENT - returns a vector whose
components are the number of
dimensions in each direction
SIZE - returns total number of
elements
RANK - returns dimensionality
[The Group believed this name
could be confusing. Perhaps
NDIM might be more appropriate.]
LBOUND - returns lower bound
UBOUND - returns upper bound
c. Array sections.
This feature allows users to access parts of arrgys.
Eg A(*, 10)
A(I, -*)
A(2:10:2, I) - every other element
A(INT, 1:2) - INT an integer array with
values in range for the
subscript (use is restricted).
[Professor D Parkinson (QMC) would like to see more general pointers
available than just integers.]
d. Conformability.
The shape of an array is its number of dimensions and the extent of
each. Arrays of the same shape are said to conform. Expressions
assigned to arrays require conformability.
e. IDENTIFY.
This is essentially a dynamic equivalence.
Eg IDENTIFY <2:N> LDIAG(I) = A(I.I-1)
this picks out sub diagonal of array A
[There has been some general criticism of IDENTIFY for trying to do
too much. Presently it:
i. defines range
ii. renames array
iii. transforms linear subscript
iv. may be many-one (use restricted)]
f. WHERE.
Eg i. WHERE (A.NE.0) A=1./A
ii. WHERE (A.NE.0)
A=1./A
OTHERWISE
A=C
ENDWHERE
[There has been a problem found with transformational functions eg
WHERE (A.GT.0) A = MATMUL (A,B)
WHERE (A.NE.0) A = F(1./A)
For this reason transformational functions have recently been banned
from WHERE]
g. Dynamic arrays.
Arrays can be declared with a rank but without explicit ranges for
indices.
h. Intrinsic functions.
A large set of these form an integral pert of the new array facility
proposals.
Eg MERGE
DOTPRODUCT
SUM, MAXVAL
SPREAD
CSHIFT
PROJECT
There are restrictions in passing arrays as arguments. In general
shapes must agree on subroutine calls.
i. FORALL
A new form of WHERE statement.
j. SHAPE.
An intrinsic function that reshapes an array, including one
dimensional array constructors.
6. DATE OF NEXT MEETING
26 September 1983 at BCS HQ, 13 Mansfield. Street, London W1M 0BP. In the
afternoon Mike Metcalf (CERN) will give a talk on Fortran Optimization.
Mike has recently written a book on this subject and a publication notice
describing it is enclosed with these minutes.
MIKE NUNN
30 June 1983
THE BRITISH COMPUTER SOCIETY
FORTRAN SPECIALIST Group
Receipts and Payments Account for the year ended 30th April, 1983
(Please submit to HQ by 31st May)
£. p. £. p.
Balance at beginning of year 343. 02
Bank
Cash
Add: Receipts
HQ Allocation 150. 00
Other income (Please specify) 1329. 00
(see letter 16 May 1983)
Total balance and receipts 1822.02
Less: Payments
£. p.
Meeting Expenditure (BCS letter 6.5.83) 17. 50
Group Mailing (BCS SGs) 267. 89
Secretarial
Committee (attending Specialist Group 21. 20
Professional (speaker) Board) 12. 50
Project (ANSI X3J3 Observer's Fee) 51. 54
Other Expenditure (Recovering Forum cost) 29. 92
(Please specify)
Total Payments 400.55
Balance at end of year - See note below (A)£1421.47
Note 1. The balance at the end of year was made up of:
Bank 1421.47
Cash
(B)1421.47
(A and B should agree)
Auditor's Report
I certify that the above Receipts and Payments Account for the year.... are
in accordance with the books and vouchers of the......................Group
..........................19....... Auditor .............................
.............................. Chairman/Secretary
.............................. Treasurer
To: BCS Fortran Specialist Group and NAG
From: John Reid
Subject: X3J3 meeting 86 at Urbana, May 9-13, 1983
Date: 23rd May 1983
References: [1] 86(2)HS/JAMS-1 Event handling proposal for S6
[2] 86(2)DTM-1 Handling of arithmetic events
[3] 86(9)BTS-1 Proposals for a derived data type facility
[4] 86(6)RRR-2 Dynamic storage allocation
[5] 86(6)JH-1 Array constructors
[6] 86(6)JH-2 SHAPE intrinsic function
[7] 86(6/9)JKR-1 Procedure overloading and the array intrinsics
[8] 85(6)JKR-1 Proposals on where, pack and unpack
[9] 85(6)JKR-2 WHERE statement
[10] 8B(8)DAH-1 Clarifying dependent processing
[11] 86(8)KWH-1 Proposal on restricting non-Fortran procedures
[12] 86(8)KHH-2 Proposal on consistent functions
[13] 85(*)PAC-1 Proposal for consistent functions
[14] 86(7)NSB-1 Construct names
[15] 86(9)JLS-2 Array processing and derived data types
[16] 86(9)JLS-1 Structure name qualification
[17] 86(6)JKR-2 Simplification of the array features
[18] 85(*)JLW-1,page 6 Metalanguage
1. Introduction
This note summarizes meeting 86 of the Fortran committee and my own
role at this meeting.
Formal votes of the committee are firm decisions (though they may
always be reversed by a later formal vote) taken only by full members
or their alternates and are yes-no votes. Straw votes are used to test
the opinion of the committee to give guidance on whether a formal vote
is appropriate and indicate whether further work on a proposal is
needed. In this case everyone in the room (members, alternates,
consultants and observers) may vote and they are usually
yes-no-undecided votes.
2. Event handling
A simple proposal [1] that gives a framework for event handling was
narrowly passed (11-9). The subsidiary proposals to add SUSPEND blocks
(blocks of code that do not trigger event handling) and to add
ACTIVATE/DEACTIVATE statements (dynamic activation/deactivation) were
passed subsequently by 12-7 and 12-6.
Several members of the committee feel that these proposals are not
the right way to go (hence the near vote) and have promised to work on
the topic and bring forward alternatives. I voted in favour because I
feel that standardized error handling is needed.
This simple proposal does not include the definition of any actual
events, but David Muxworthy [2] discussed the possibilities and straw
votes approved the proposal that 'standard conforming processors must
implement all standard defined events' by 14-7-12 and the proposal
that 'arithmetic events should be few and broadly defined rather than
numerous and narrowly defined' by 23-1-9.
3. Derived data tapes
Derived data types will permit arithmetic statements to be written
for structures as well as for the standard data types and will make
the language much more extendable. For example it should be possible
to write a module for matrix arithmetic.
Brian Smith's first proposal([3], page 2) was of a technical nature
and related to whether copying the text of a form declaration exactly
from one scope to another would give rise to the same data type or
whether a USE reference to the original would be necessary. His
proposal (making USE necessary if the same type is wanted) was passed
by 12-10. The narrow vote is a little alarming but I believe that most
votes were for a preference rather than a firm requirement.
The first part of Brian's main proposal ([3], prop.2, §9.1.5,
§9.1.6) was passed by 20-5. This gives the infix notation for
operators (using extra syntax in functions involving one or two
arguments) but does not allow for generalization of assignment. A
straw vote on the rest went 17-7-11 and time was short so Brian
decided to postpone a formal vote on it until the next meeting.
4. Array processing
The far reaching proposal to add dynamic storage allocation of
arrays (see [4]) was passed by the surprising majority of 27-0. This
will mean that systems will have to support heap storage whose
presence mag well allow simplifications in other parts of the
language.
A proposal for array constructors [5], generalizing the previous
proposal for array constants was passed by 27-0. Note that it
constructs one-dimensional arrays. A proposal to delete the intrinsic
function SEQ, no longer needed since all its functionality is provided
by the array constructor, was passed by 28-0.
A proposal [6] for a SHAPE function to reshape arrays (including
those formed with array constructors) was passed by 26-0. It also
allows for permutation of array subscripts.
I presented my paper [7] on 'procedure overloading and the array
intrinsics' as a tutorial and obtained straw votes of 14-8-11 in
favour of the idea of overloading procedures (allowing several
versions of a procedure, distinguishable at call time by the numbers
and types of the arguments) and of 13-7-13 in favour of including the
rank (number of dimensions) of an array as a property to be used to
distinguish between overloaded procedures.
I presented my proposal from meeting 85 for an indexed WHERE
statement, renamed to my original name of FORALL at the request of the
array subgroup. It is explained in [8] and specified in proposal 2 of
[9]. It permits indices to be introduced into array assignment
statements, with the option of control by a logical expression, and
follows the precedent of mathematical notation where indices are
introduced when necessary. The main worry of the committee at the last
meeting concerned the scope of the index, a topic that neither I nor
the array subgroup had fully considered. Our deliberations meanwhile
confirmed our original decision in favour of local scope and this was
accepted by the committee. An amendment was added to require the
logical expression to be evaluated first in case functions with side
effects are called in the course of evaluation of the expression. The
amended proposal passed by 20-5.
5. Procedure calling
Dean Herington proposed ([10], prop.1,2) that interfaces must be
available if the dependent processing features of keyworded actual
arguments or generic dummy arguments (e.g. of single or double
precision) are used. This was accepted by 25-0. The same restriction
for calling array-valued functions, with consequent deletion of the
ARRAY-VALUED statement ([10], prop.3,4) was passed by 24-0.
Kurt Hirchert proposed [11] adding restrictions to procedures
called from Fortran but written in other languages, but was defeated
by 8-15 partly because his wording is difficult to understand and
partly because it was felt that once a non-Fortran procedure is called
the program becomes non-standard anyway.
Kurt also proposed [12] adding the concept of consistent functions
for those that depend only on their arguments. The idea is based on
Alan Clarke's suggestion [15] but Kurt made it much more complicated
by trying to allow for such situations as a first call setting up a
table of values to be used on later calls. His intent was defeated on
a straw vote of 6-21-6. I voted against, though I am in favour of
Alan's idea, because Kurt's changes made it all too complicated and
inappropriate in the environment of parallel processing provided by
the array facilities (but see end of §8 below).
6. Construct names
Walt Brainerd suggested [14] that constructs such as DO blocks be
namable by placing an alphanumeric name ahead of the first statement
and behind the last statement. The committee liked the idea (straw
vote 17-3-10) but it was not proposed formally. A straw vote on a
similar way for labelling intermediate blocks (such as ELSE IF) was
undecided (12-13-4).
7. Structures
Lawrie Schonfelder gave his papers [15] and [16] as a tutorial. A
straw vote on extending parameterization (currently available for the
precision and range of reals) to derived data types was favourable
(15-3-13) and there was also a favourable vote (16-5-11) for a simple
aggregation mechanism as well as the derived data type facility. There
was much discussion and no resolution of the problem of whether
substructures should be referenced top-down (structure.field) or
bottom-up (field.structure). The basic problem is that current Fortran
has subscripts after array names (top-down) but 'fastest moving'
subscripts first (bottom-up). If an array A is declared for a type
associated with a structure containing a field B which is an array
then with bottom-up structure naming B(1:10).A(1:20) mag be regarded
naturally as an array of extent (10,20). This was Lawrie's suggestion
and it was clear that the committee needed time to consider it
further. A straw vote on the principle was favourable (25-2-6). It was
also agreed (25-3-1) that it would be preferable to replace the
character '.' in substructure names to avoid ambiguity in expressions
such as A.OR.B, but there was no agreement on its replacement. The
favourite was '__', followed by '@'.
8. Array subgroup
I attended all the meetings of the array subgroup. Discussion
centred on the details of the proposals put to the full group later in
the meeting (see §4 above) and on my paper [17] on simplifying the
array facilities. The group approved of the idea of removing reverse
section selectors and I will be writing a formal proposal for the next
meeting (it will be named 87(6)JKR-1). It will allow further
regularization so that sections of the form '(*)' become '(:)', i.e.
indexed sections with upper and lower limits defaulted to the
corresponding array extents. It also approved of the idea of moving
'elemental' declarations to the called function and I will be writing
a proposal on this (to be called 87(6)JKR-2). I will need rules to
make the function consistent so this will put a 'foot in the door'
towards Alan Clarke's wishes [13]. The array subgroup is also
sympathetic towards null arrays, so I will be writing a proposal on
this too (to be 87(6)JKR-3).
9. Documentation
S6 (changes with respect to F77) has not been updated since the
last meeting. The person who used to handle it has left the committee
and did not send the tape to the new person. It is planned to produce
one more S6 incorporating the changes passed at meetings 85 and 86.
S7 (merge of S6 and F77) is huge (about 1.5 inches thick).
Jerry Wagener proposed a minor addition [18] to the metalanguage to
be used in S7. It is a very readable version of BNF and was accepted
by 21-0.
REPORT ON ANSI X3J3 COMMITTEE MEETING
CHAMPAIGN-URBANA, ILLINOIS, MAY 9-l3 1983
by David Muxworthy
[This report was originally written for EWICS. Only the first four pages
were reproduced in these minutes.]
Summary
The EWICS proposals for minimal event handling were adopted, on
the understanding that the proposals needed considerable
modification and extension to make them acceptable to all X3J3
members and more useful to Fortran programmers. There were
a large number of other formal votes, mostly on relatively
minor matters except that derived data types were adopted.
It is still proposed, subject to editorial work proceeding
satisfactorily, to vote at the August X3J3 meeting on the
S7 document as a basis for future work.
Administrative Matters
Walt Brainerd and Lloyd Campbell were appointed editors of
S7; Jeanne Martin was appointed alternate international
representative; Neldon Marshall was appointed alternate
secretary. Joel Clinkenbeard was made responsible for
collating and pursuing all external comments on technical
matters. A meeting will be held at Fort Collins, Colorado
on July 11 and 12 to discuss reorganisation of TC97 so far
as it affects SC5.
A ten page summary of the S6 document (proposals approved so
far) is to go to CBEMA and will be publicised generally.
Future ISO Fortran Experts Group meetings are planned for
Geneva in April 1984 and Bonn in April 1985.
The next X3J3 meeting will be on August 8-12 at Los Alamos,
New Mexico (August 8 at Los Alamos Laboratory, August 9-12
at Los Alamos Inn). Papers for the pre-distribution must
reach Dick Hendricksen of Cray by Tuesday July 5, with a
note stating that they are for the distribution. Motel
reservations should be made through Los Alamos Laboratory,
not directly with the Inn.
Future meetings are planned as follows:
November 14-18 1983 Seattle, Washington
February 1984 Austin, Texas
May 1984 Boston, Massachusetts
August 1984 Jackson, Wyoming or Estes Park,
Colorado
November 1984 Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Technical
Event Handling
The three EWICS proposals contained in paper 86(2) HS/JAMS-l,
with minor last minute revisions made by Cees Ampt and
David Muxworthy, were formally adopted. A copy of the scribe
notes taken for the X3J3 minutes is appended to this report.
These notes were largely a vote for EWICS TC-l to continue
the work rather than an acceptance that the proposals were
complete. There was strong opposition to the proposals.
It would be advantageous to rewrite them for appearance in
the S7 document.
There was also a tutorial on arithmetic event handling by
David Muxworthy. There are problems with this because of the
wide varieties of hardware on which the Fortran standard must
run. Straw votes and discussion showed that the committee
were in favour of broadly defined arithmetic events, such as T
"numeric error" and saw a need to detect that an event had
happened only at the end of a set of statements, not necessarily
at the point of the event. Also, it seemed clear that many
did not want underflow to be a necessarily captured system-
defined event.
Array subroutine items
The main item was adoption of the ALLOCATE statement which
allows subroutine libraries to declare local arrays and to
retain values between calls (Paper RRR-2 with lower bound
specification removed. Approved 27-0). Minor clarifications
were voted on as follows: paper RRR-l, approved 20-0; RRR-3,
24-0; JM-4, 26-0; JM-3, 28-0. The FOR ALL statement was
approved 20-5 subject to further work being done on the possible
side-effects of having only a local scope for variables (paper
JKR-2).
Control structure and program unit items
Paper KWH-1, which aimed to restrict non-Fortran procedures in
a standard conforming program was defeated on a formal vote
8-15. A subsequent straw vote on approval of the intent of
the proposal was 14-l0-7. A more refined straw vote gave:
need stronger proposal 2, need this 7, need weaker (or no)
proposal l2, undecided 9.
Paper KWH-2, which aimed to define consistent functions, was
defeated in a straw vote 6-21-6 and was withdrawn. A con-
sistent function would always produce the same result from the
same arguments, perform no input-output and have no side effects
However, too many X3J3 members said that it was an unworkable
idea in practice.
Paper KWH-3, which aimed to harmonize old-style DO loops and
new-style DO loops, had proposals 1 to 3 adopted 21-2, 22-0 and
19-6. The latter allows EXIT and CYCLE to apply to Fortran 77
DO loops! X3J3 obviously thought there was too great a risk
of confusion if these proposals were not approved. However,
the line was drawn at introducing a real DO index for the new-
style DO as a deprecated feature. This was defeated on a
straw vote 11-19-1 and was withdrawn.
Paper WSB-l was discussed. This allows construct names to
appear where a label would normally be placed. A straw vote
on proposal 1 was 17-3-10; a straw vote on the concept of
naming intermediate statements (ELSE, CASE etc.), mainly for
compiler checking purposes, went 12-13-4.
A paper by Dean Herrington formalising some concepts of
dependent compilation was approved 25-0 (proposals l and 2)
and 24-0 (proposals 3 and 4).
Numerical and data type items
John Reid introduced a paper, JKR-1, which would allow over-
loading of procedures through a "generic block". This
would allow the array intrinsics to be put in a bundle.
Some indecisive straw votes were taken, 14-8-ll on overload-
ing procedures with optional and keyword arguments, 13-7-13
on rank being used to distinguish between overloads.
Paper JLS-l proposed a separator for use between a structure
name and a field name. Voting on which character was
"acceptable" was:
? 2 % 0 ! 14 .. 13 - 14 _ 12
:: 9 @ 16 '_ 12 13 __ 20
A vote where each person could vote for two possibilities
only (after eliminating the lowest three) gave:
: 7 .. 4 - 9 _ 3
@ 16 ._ 3 5 ___ 16
A final run-off gave: @ 11, ___20
but a formal vote could not be taken because insufficient
notice had been given. The preferred characters __ would
require the restriction that _ not be the last character in
a name. (I would prefer that _ not be considered as a
letter at all.)
Paper BTS-1, defining operators for derived data types, was
approved. A straw vote on proposal 1 (only one place for
form declaration) was 15-9-12 and approved by a formal vote
12-10. Votes on using functions to define operators and
subroutines to define assignments went:
functions and subroutines rather
than new statements 18-9-8
functions overloaded to define
operators 23-4-8, formal 20-5
subroutines overloaded to define
assignment 17-7-11
Paper JLS-2 addressed the potential confusion of FORM being
used both to define a derived data type and a simple aggregate
A straw vote 16-5-11 requested further work on this. A vote
15-3-13 related to requesting a new proposal on derived data
types specification.
Kulisch and Ulrich gave a presentation on their arithmetic
proposal. After complaints earlier in the week within
subgroup 9, the presentation was much clearer than the
paper in the distribution. A straw vote on the ultimate
destination of the proposal gave:
in the language 2
in a standardised language
extension module 11
in an arithmetic support
bundle 11
undecided 4
Kulisch and Ulrich were disappointed with this as apparently
they had expected the proposal to get into the full language.
The distinction between the second and third possibilities
is important. Anything in a standardised module may be
implemented as if it were a part of the language with obvious
consequences for efficiency. The arithmetic support bundle
may not.
Input-output items
FMT=** was formally adopted as the name-directed format
specifier 22-0, after ?, <> , +*, *+ had attracted little
support (paper JB-3). Paper JB-2, clarifying IOSTAT and
ERR in OPEN, was approved 21-0. The subgroup was asked
to investigate the problems of making BN the default for
internal files and in declaring BZ a deprecated feature
for all files.
Documentation
The simple metalanguage described in paper JLW-l was approved
27-0 in a formal vote on condition that the metasymbols be
printed in a different type face.
SPECIALIST GROUP ANNUAL REPORT
YEAR ENDED 3O APRIL 1983
Name of Group FORTRAN
No. of Members 145
No. of BCS Members 85
No. and type of regular meetings: 5 meetings per year, mostly at BCS
Headquarters or elsewhere in London. Average attendance 18.
Format: whole day meetings: morning - business and X3J3 activities; afternoon
seminar by invited speaker.
Studies undertaken: Monitoring X3J3 activities; review of Fortran 77 compilers.
Publications: Article in DataLink and ACM FORTEC FORUM by A. Clarke - "the
future of Fortran".
Relations with other bodies: Liaison with ANSI X3J3, BSI and ISO language
standards committees.
Other activities: /
Election of Officers: for 1983/84 at AGM on 11th April 1983
Chairman: J. D. Wilson
Secretary: M. Nunn
Treasurer: T. L. van Raalte
General Remarks /
Projects for next year: Direct two-way reports from X3J3 via regular members
of both groups. Representation at next ISO Fortran Experts Meeting in
W.Germany early 1984.
Chairman: J. D. Wilson
(Signature) J.D. Wilson