To: J3                                                     J3/26-205
From: Malcolm Cohen
Subject: Editorial improvement suggestion
Date: 2026-October-19

1. Introduction

It is not obvious to the casual reader looking things up, that a particular
intrinsic function is SIMPLE.

This is exacerbated by table 17.1, which has
    "ES indicates that the procedure is a simple elemental subroutine"
but the immediately preceding line says
    "E indicates that the procedure is an elemental function",
with no mention of it being simple. An elemental function is not even required
to be pure, so this is a significant omission.

This is further exacerbated by similar language in each function, which
declares that it is an inquiry function, or elemental function, whereas
the language for subroutines is accurate: anything it does not claim is
not possessed.

Yes, anyone reading the sole paragraph six pages away, buried in "Classes
of intrinsic procedure", can work it out. Someone who does not already know
this, who is checking the characteristics of some specific routine for being
pure/simple will not necessarily think to look there.

Note that the functions in ISO_FORTRAN_ENV, IEEE_ARITHMETIC, and
IEEE_EXCEPTIONS do not have their description altered by this paper.
That is because that would be a technical effect, but this paper is purely
editorial. A technical paper correcting the descriptions of those functions
should be a separate paper.


2. Edits to N2258

[421:22] 17.7 Standard generic intrinsic procedures, p2,
         change "an elemental function"
         to "a simple elemental function".

[422:1] Same paragraph,
        change "an inquiry function"
        to "a simple inquiry function".

[422:5] Same paragraph,
        change "a transformational function"
        to "a simple transformational function".

[563:30,32,34] 18.10 Summary of the procedures,
               make corresponding changes for the IEEE modules.


3. Optional edits to N2258

[throughout] Change the class of intrinsic functions, and functions in
             ISO_C_BINDING,
             from "Class. Elemental function."
             to "Class. Simple elemental function."
             Similarly,
             "Transformational" -> "Simple transformational",
             "Inquiry" -> "Simple inquiry".

The text for all of these are produced by macros, so it is not hard to change.

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