| James Giles 2005-02-23, 8:58 pm |
| gary.l.scott@lmco.com wrote:
> Michael Metcalf wrote:
>
> Since I know not ALL moved on (me for example, others in my area), I
> say its never too late to open this programming domain back up by doing
> it better than those other languages.
There's a new data type being proposed right now. It has the
oxymoronic name TYPELESS, but it implements the data type
already in the standard described as the BIT model, except that
it doesn't attribute any special properties to the leading bit of
a value. Change the name of that type to BINARY and get
bit-resolution KINDs for it and you've got what you need.
A BINARY array of KIND-1 elements would be an array of
BITs. You could index them with ordinary subscripting
syntax, select sequences (array(5:9)) and so on.
(There are a small number of other problems with the TYPELESS
proposal as written besides just the name. For one thing, it is
big-endian throughout, while Fortran is otherwise little-endian.
So, it needs work. The form it presently has is identical to a
feature already in a particular vendor's compiler. So, you can
guess who proposed it to the committee.)
--
J. Giles
"I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software
design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously
no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated
that there are no obvious deficiencies." -- C. A. R. Hoare
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