21.2.12 TBD (Transforming)

Continue researching gotchas, designing the transformational process, and implementing it.

Specific issues to resolve:

• Just where should (if it was implemented) USE processing take place?

  This gets into the whole issue of how g77 should handle the concept of modules. I think GNAT already takes on this issue, but don't know more than that. Jim Giles has written extensively on comp.lang.fortran about his opinions on module handling, as have others. Jim's views should be taken into account.

  Actually, Richard M. Stallman (RMS) also has written up some guidelines for implementing such things, but I'm not sure where I read them. Perhaps the old gcc2@cygnus.com list.

  If someone could dig references to these up and get them to me, that would be much appreciated! Even though modules are not on the short-term list for implementation, it'd be helpful to know now how to avoid making them harder to implement them later.

• Should the g77 command become just a script that invokes all the various preprocessing that might be needed, thus making it seem slower than necessary for legacy code that people are unwilling to convert, or should we provide a separate script for that, thus encouraging people to convert their code once and for all?

  At least, a separate script to behave as old g77 did, perhaps named g77old, might ease the transition, as might a corresponding one that converts source codes named g77oldnew.

  These scripts would take all the pertinent options g77 used to take and run the appropriate filters, passing the results to g77 or just making new sources out of them (in a subdirectory, leaving the user to do the dirty deed of moving or copying them over the old sources).

• Do other Fortran compilers provide a prefix syntax to govern the treatment of backslashes in CHARACTER (or Hollerith) constants?

  Knowing what other compilers provide would help.

• Is it okay to drop support for the `-fintrin-case-initcap', `-fmatch-case-initcap', `-fsymbol-case-initcap', and `-fcase-initcap' options?

  I've asked info-gnu-fortran@gnu.org for input on this. Not having to support these makes it easier to write the new front end, and might also avoid complicated its design.

  The consensus to date (1999-11-17) has been to drop this support. Can't recall anybody saying they're using it, in fact.