Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!hc!lanl!jlg
From: jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: intrinsic functions, math operators (was: i++, i+=1, i=i+1)
Message-ID: <3907@lanl.gov>
Date: 21 Sep 88 02:05:17 GMT
References: <1554@ficc.uu.net>
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 21

From article <1554@ficc.uu.net>, by peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva):
>> I may indeed want to write
>> my own versions of some of the above functions (add pow() to the list).
> 
> So #undef them.

#undef _only_ works on macros.  If pow() is not implemented as a macro,
#undef will do _nothing_ to it.  

By the way, if you really believe that intrinsic functions should not be
identified as such, you'd better hurry - the ANSI committee is about to 
define a whole raft of them.  It is a good idea though, it helps make 
code portable (something that C is particularly bad at).

> There's even a syntax for differentiation that is expressable in ASCII.

And, when differentiation is added to a programming language, the syntax
you mention is the one that should be used.

J. Giles
Los Alamos