J3/04-102

Date:    6 December 03
To:      J3
From:    Dan Nagle
Subject: Enhancing Stop


One of the public comments regarding the draft standard
requested that an "exit code" be passed to the operating system
when a Fortran program stops.  I don't believe we can require
that (see 1.4(2)), but we can suggest that behavior.

While visiting stop, the trivial enhancement of allowing
named constants for the stop integer or character value
is also suggested.

Number:

Title: Enhanced Stop

Submitted By: J3

Status: For Consideration

References: Section 8.4 Stop statement

Estimated Impact: The features proposed here have low impact,
                  and would affect no other statement.

Detailed Specification: Add a note to Section 8.4 suggesting that
         the scalar-char-constant be written to stderr
         and that the digits be used as the program exit code.
         The current language "available in a processor
         dependent manner" doesn't aid portability much.

         I don't believe we can do more, as we don't say
         how programs are executed (so we can't say
         how programs stop executing, either).

         Also, allow named constants for the scalar-char-constant
         and the digits to allow centralized control
         for the programmer.  This should have low cost
         to implement as the compiler must store the stop
         code somewhere anyway, and a named constant
         is just as available as a literal.

History: