g77 negative array bound on x86 Linux

[Ossama Othman <othman at astrosun dot tn dot cornell dot edu>]

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is related to all of negative array bound issues that
I found in the list archives but I just wanted to get some confirmation of
the problem.

Basically, the following code fragment produces the error listed below,
on my PII-Linux 2.0.33-libc 6 box:

      SUBROUTINE DAFAH (
     &                   www
     &  )
  
      INTEGER               LBCELL
      PARAMETER           ( LBCELL  = -5 )
 
      INTEGER               www ( LBCELL : *)

      END

and the error from "g77 -c x.f":

x.f: In subroutine `dafah':
x.f:2: 
        .                   www
                            ^
Array `www' at (^) is too large to handle
Exit 1

This code used to compile with an older version of g77 (not from egcs).
I've been told that this is valid FORTRAN code.  Could someone please
explain what may be wrong or if this is an egcs/g77 bug?  If it is a bug,
is there fix available or one being developed?  It isn't practical for me
to use positive array bounds since the library code the above code
fragment was based on is quite large and has _many_ negative array bounds.

Thanks for any help and information.
-Ossama