xlf Parameter statements

[gravishanker at eagle.wesleyan.edu]

Hi

I found a strange behaviour on an IBM RISC/6000 (running AIX V 3.1) while
compiling a Fortran '77 program. It is so strange that it took a while before
nailing the problem down, so I thought I will share it here. The problem has
been tested even after the 3003 maintainance upgrade, which for us also meant
going to Version 2 of xlf. On a Silicon Graphics Iris or on a Vax, the
statement

	Parameter a=10.

is accepted and a is assigned the value correctly. The xlf compiler does not
issue any compilation error, but does not assign anything for a. This is a
parsing problem and if you print the value of parametera that has the value of
10. The expected syntax is,

	Parameter (a=10.)

and I think, ( acts as the lookahead token for parsing the Parameter statement. 

On the other hand, xlf complains for 

	Parameter a=10.,b=-9.

and enclosing the assignments in parantheses solves the compiler error. Of
course, the Iris and Vax are perfectly happy with this type of statement.

Ravi