Re: another way to shoot yourself in the foot?

["James Giles" <jamesgiles@worldnet.att.net>]

Dick Hendrickson wrote:
> Colin Paul Gloster wrote:
...
>> Are "there are a number of things the Fortran standard leaves
>> unspecified that it should pin down"?
>>
> Sure, Maybe, No.  Take your pick.  Generally, I'd say no.
> I think the balance between execution speed, compile time
> checking, and user responsibility is pretty good.

The above is a direct quote from one of my articles and is *way*
out of context.  Yes, there are a number of things the Fortran
standard leaves unspecified that it should pin down.  For example
(and I think this is the original context), integer arithmetic should
be exact if it doesn't overflow.  No one would accept an implementation
that did otherwise, but the standard should actually require it.

Many other languages also don't explicitly require such things.
I'm not certain that Ada does.

-- 
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

"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability"  -- E. W. Dijkstra