Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Pointers in Fortran
Message-ID: <482@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 28 Sep 88 06:48:02 GMT
Sender: news@quintus.UUCP
Reply-To: ok@quintus ()
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 16

Today I received a rather irritating piece of E-mail from someone following
up the great Fortran-vs-{C,PL/I,Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all} debate.  His
claim that malloc() is not a standard part of C I think we can dismiss, and
the claim that the NAG library is a de facto part of standard Fortran will
probably surprise the Numerical Algorithms Group.  But a claim more relevant
to comp.lang.fortran was that pointers are *already* "standard practice" in
Fortran.  Is this true?

Of the Fortran compilers I have access to, one has pointers, in the form
	POINTER /integer variable/ based variable, ..., based variable
which is like the PL/I declaration
	DECLARE 1 not_named_in_fortran
		2 based variable ... 2 based variable 
		BASED pointer;
except that the pointer is declared as an _integer_ variable (can you
believe it?).  Is this how other Fortrans having pointers do it?