[Mpi-forum] Reserved MPI_ prefix & namespace in C and Fortran

[William Gropp]

Good point - but the fix there is to mention this case and provide a forward reference.  As Nick notes, the intent here is clear - reserve all names that the Forum might use for future expansion of MPI.  Trying to be overly precise about what that means is error prone and accomplishes nothing - users can write programs without the ability to use MPI_ or PMPI_ (except for the profiling interface exception) as the beginning of a name.

Bill

William Gropp
Director, Parallel Computing Institute
Deputy Director for Research
Institute for Advanced Computing Applications and Technologies
Paul and Cynthia Saylor Professor of Computer Science
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign



On Aug 25, 2012, at 7:34 AM, Bronis R. de Supinski wrote:

> 
> So, while we are debating whether the wording is sufficient,
> we are overlooking a far more important error in the restriction.
> It is simply wrong. The standard is not consistent.
> 
> Specifically, when one uses the MPI profiling interface, the
> mechanism is precisely to declare functions that begin with
> MPI_. So the intent of the standard is that we are supposed
> to violate that restriction. This issue has nagged at me in
> the past but I have simply ignored it. However, I would oppose
> increasing the scope of the restriction without fixing the
> real inconsistency.
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