J3/01-277

Date:     August 4, 2001
To:       J3
From:     Dick Hendrickson
Subject:  Chapter 1 and Intro comments

1)  Intro XIV.  Need to add regularization of I/O keywords on OPEN.
Format and I/O statements to (4)

2)  Page 2, section 1.4(6).  Don't we specify IEEE rounding properties
on those processors which support IEEE.  Maybe we need to add an "except
for IEEE Computational Rounding And Processing"

3)  Page 2, section 1.4(7).  Does the stream I/O stuff implicitly
specify the properties to be "C like"?

4)  Page 2, section 1.5(2).  It looks to me like all of the obsolescent
features are syntactical features.  Should we make this sentence
stronger and simply say the processor must report all of them, deleting
from "insofar..."
…
5)  Page 2, 1.5.1, last paragraph.  Doesn't F95 say PAD= is
'UNDEFINED'?  Isn't that something we perverted at meeting 157 via the
misuse of the interp process?

6)  Page 3, 1.5.2.  We need to say that MOD(I,J) has been changed in F2K
(and also in F95).  I'm not sure if it is a compatible extension or
not.  Changing from "processor dependent" to "prohibited" seems to me
that it could break a program that relied on a particular processor
dependent implementation.  The last paragraph of page 2 seems to me to
say this is OK (otherwise how would the clock and random number routines
be used?).

7)  Page 3, 1.5.2.  Do we need to say something about IEEE arithmetic
compatibility?  I seem to recall some change to X**Y, or maybe X/Y, from
prohibited to processor dependent or something like that.  In any case,
changing to a system that allows NaN instead of overflow/abort should be
mentioned.  This touchy-feely section is to give a flavor of what to
expect.  Perhaps a non-normative note.

9)  Page 4, 1.5.3, bullet (3).  Can also specify PAD= on a READ I
believe.

9)  Page 6, 1.6.5 (5).  Could we delete this one.  Saying we do
something consistently adds nothing.  Otherwise maybe add something like
"as opposed to substring things"

10)  Page 7, 1.7 1st line of last paragraph.  Change five to six to
account for PAD= change.