To: J3 Members J3/16-129r2 From: Van Snyder & Steve Lionel Subject: Absurdity concerning namelist comment Reference: 16-007 Date: 2016 February 09 1. Introduction =============== 10.10.2p3 says a slash is a value separator. 10.11.3.6p1 says 'a "!" character after a value separator ... initiates a comment.' 10.11.3.2p3 says "A slash encountered as a value separator during the execution of a namelist input statement causes termination of execution of that input statement...." 10.11.3.2p4 says "A namelist comment may appear after any value separator except a slash." 10.11.3.2p5 says "Successive namelist records are read by namelist input until a slash is encountered; the remainder of the record is ignored and need not follow the rules for namelist input values." If a "!" appears after the slash that "causes termination of execution of that input statement" is the remainder of the record ignored (10.11.3.2p5), or does an error condition exist because a comment is not permitted after the slash (10.11.3.2p4), or is it OK because the input need not follow the rules for namelist input values (10.11.3.2p5)? The contradiction appears to be somewhat (errrm... completely) absurd. Hopefully, an interp is not needed to clear this up. 2. Edits ======== [274:27+ 10.11.3.2p3] Insert after paragraph 3: "Successive namelist records are read by namelist input until a slash is encountered; the remainder of the record is ignored." {Moving the initial part of p5 to before p4} [274:28 10.11.3.2p4] After "except a slash" add "(which terminates namelist input)" [274:30-31 10.11.3.2p5] Delete paragraph 5, part of which moved to before paragraph 4. The text now reads: 4 Successive namelist records are read by namelist input until a slash is encountered; the remainder of the record is ignored. 5 A namelist comment may appear after any value separator except a slash (which terminates namelist input). A namelist comment is also permitted to start in the first nonblank position of an input record except within a character literal constant.