To: J3                                                     J3/18-150
From: Jon Steidel
Subject: Intent to specify no intent
Date: 2018-February-15



Description
===========
Some programming standards require that an INTENT attribute be specified
for each dummy argument.  There are cases where the existing INTENTs,
IN, OUT, and INOUT do not accurately describe the intent of a dummy
argument.

If INTENT is not specified, the default behavior is not INOUT. INOUT
requires that the actual argument associated with the INOUT dummy
argument be definable. It is sometimes useful to declare a procedure
which for some invocations references a dummy argument, but does not
define it.  For other calls to the same procedure, that same argument
is both referenced and defined during the call.  If this dummy argument
is give the INTENT(INOUT) attribute, the actual argument cannot be a
constant because a constant is not definable.

In a case such as this, it is desirable to be able to declare an intent
that is the same as not declaring an intent at all.  This could be
achieved with a new INTENT attribute, say, INTENT(NONE) or by not
specifying an attribute for the intent at all, that is, INTENT().