Re: gfortran patch - g77 record markers

[Richard E Maine <Richard dot Maine at nasa dot gov>]

On May 31, 2005, at 9:42 AM, Steve Kargl wrote:

> On Tue, May 31, 2005 at 07:02:11PM +0300, jblomqvi@cc.hut.fi wrote:
> > The choice of default record marker is made at link time by linking in
> > different libraries...

> I was wondering about the need for 2 separate, complete, libraries...

I wonder about the tradeoff of overhead vs functionality here. As Steve 
notes, the overhead seems a bit high. Let me add that this approach 
limits the functionality. High overhead plus limited functionality 
seems like a combination to make one wonder.

The limitation in functionality is that a link-time option is, unless 
I'm quite confused about what you mean, inherently all-or-nothing. 
There is presumably no way to specify one form for some files, but a 
different form for others. It seems to me that it is pretty plausible 
for someone to want to be able to read or write a file with a different 
record-mark scheme without changing every other file used by the 
program.

In fact, one scenario occurs to me as extremely simple and likely to 
occur. How does one write a program to copy a file to one with a 
different record-mark scheme if the selection is made at link time?

--
Richard Maine                |  Good judgment comes from experience;
Richard.Maine@nasa.gov       |  experience comes from bad judgment.
                            |        -- Mark Twain