J3/99-192 Date: August 4, 1999 To: J3 From: Keith Bierman Subject: asterisks as I/O units NUMBER: temp CORB-3 TITLE: asterisks as I/O units KEYWORDS: asterisk, I/O, unit DEFECT TYPE: STATUS: submitted QUESTION: Does the Fortran 95 standard require the external unit corresponding to the I/O unit identified by an asterisk for input or output to be the same as the external unit identified by some fixed nonnegative integer value? Can the I/O unit identified by an asterisk for input or output correspond to more than one external unit? If the external unit identified by an integer value that corresponds to the I/O unit identified by an asterisk for input or output is closed, does that cause the I/O unit identified by an asterisk to become disconnected? ANSWER: Discussion: At least one Fortran 95 implementation uses -1 as the value of the I/O unit identified by an asterisk. A carefully constructed INQUIRE statement can expose this value to the user. Many users expect I/O to the units identified by asterisks to continue to work even after the corresponding units identified by integer values have been closed. REFERENCES: ISO/IEC 1539-1:1997(E), Sections 9.3 and 9.4.4.2 EDITS: SUBMITTED BY: Robert Corbett HISTORY: