15.5 Certain Changes We Don't Want to Make

This section lists changes that people frequently request, but which we do not make because we think GNU Fortran is better without them.

• Backslash in Constants: Why `'\\'' is a constant that is one, not two, characters long.
• Initializing Before Specifying: Why `DATA VAR/1/' can't precede `COMMON VAR'.
• Context-Sensitive Intrinsicness: Why `CALL SQRT' won't work.
• Context-Sensitive Constants: Why `9.435784839284958' is a single-precision constant, and might be interpreted as `9.435785' or similar.
• Equivalence Versus Equality: Why `.TRUE. .EQ. .TRUE.' won't work.
• Order of Side Effects: Why `J = IFUNC() - IFUNC()' might not behave as expected.