FORTRAN 1.1 SUNOS 4.0 with 6 patches still buggy !

[John Ioannidis]

The line
 	READ( string,*,ERR=999 ) number
isn't entirely kosher f77, of course, but that's OK, so long as your
compiler accepts it. THe problem lies in the fact that an all-blank
string should be generating an EOF and a non-numeric string should be
generating an ERR condition, and that's not handled properly

To get some more information, I added the clause END=998 and run your
program first on a Pyramid in the bsd universe and then on a Unisys
7000/40 running 4.3Tahoe.

On the Tahoe, it behaved the way I expected it to; an all-blanks string
gave it an EOF (and it branched to label 998), and a non-numeric string
(like 'foo') gave it an ERR.

On the Pyramid, the results were the same as you describe, that is, if you
give it an all-blanks string, it loops, guzzling down CPU cycles.  I ^Zed
it, ran gcore and dbx, and it showed that it was looping in an exit()
procedure. Apparently, EOF is not handled properly. Also, if you give it a
non-numeric string, it reads 0 into <number> instead of generating an
error. I don't have a Sun f77 compiler to test it with (we don't need no
stinking fortran here :^) )

FYI, there were four-five articles in Sun-spots about a month ago on EOF
problems with the fortran compiler. You might want to get them from the
archives and check them out.

Hope this helps,

/ji

#include <appropriate disclaimers>

In-Real-Life: John Ioannidis
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