To: J3 J3/18-141 From: Lorri Menard Subject: Specification variables Date: 2018-February-15 #Reference: 18-119:2.3.4 A poll among the committee members resulted in a request for specification variables in standard Fortran. From 18-119, this is described as: Automatic variables are convenient, but if one has several with the same (complicated) dimensions or lengths, it is tedious to declare them. It would be useful to have a class of parameters, identified explicitly by an attribute, say DYNAMIC, or a class of variables, x explicitly by an attribute, say SPECIFICATION, whose values are given by specification rather than constant expressions. That is, their values can depend upon other entities in exactly the same way that dimensions and length parameters can. Such entities can obviously be allowed only within procedures. If they're called dynamic parameters, it should be prohibited for them to appear in variable definition contexts. Ordinary variables that get a new initial value on every invocation (see 2.3.6) could serve this purpose, with a restriction that they are declared with an initial value before they appear in a specification expression.