hardcopy/productivity inverse correlation

[Daniel Mocsny]

In article <28762 at shamash.cdc.com> ddh at dash.udev.cdc.com (Dan Horsfall) writes:
>Granted, this is comp.lang.c, but I've been whining at length about the
>complete and utter absence of such utilities for un*x f77 -- I miss my
>CYBER FTN cross references, wherein you can get 
>  o  A "stray name" flag -- any symbol that appears only once in a module
>     is VERY likely a keying error;

If UN|X f77 supports the IMPLICIT NONE statement, then the compiler
will flag all your undeclared variables. When I used to code a bit in
FORTRAN, I got socked a few times by typos in identifiers. Sometimes
these errors are insanely hard to find, especially when you are
working with someone else's code (which may contain subtle errors you
haven't conditioned yourself to look for). For example, I read some
code that had a variable like BLURFO, and in one place the author
had typed BLURF0. Aaaagh! This was especially bad because the printout
made O (letter "oh") and 0 (numeral "zero") look very similar.

No compiler should simultaneously permit (1) programs of more than
20 lines and (2) undeclared variables.


--
Dan Mocsny				Snail:
Internet: dmocsny at minerva.che.uc.edu	Dept. of Chemical Engng. M.L. 171
	  dmocsny at uceng.uc.edu		University of Cincinnati
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