[MPI3 Fortran] Results of recent J3 Fortran meeting

[N.M. Maclaren]

On Oct 21 2010, Supalov, Alexander wrote:

> Multibyte characters are supported by MPI in some sense (see MPI_WCHAR). 
> Not sure of the level of Fortran support, though- either desired or 
> provided.

I am not sure of the level of MPI support, either!  wchar_t was oppposed
in both C90 and C99, for reasons I could describe.  C++ has a somewhat
different and more useful specification, which may or may not be fully
compatible.  And the next versions of the standards are introducing a
completely new pair of extended character types and conversion functions
for Unicode support - I believe that C++0X introduced them for compatibility
with C1X, which may or may not ever become a standard!

God alone knows what MPI implementors make of that mess, because I have
never touched the things, few scientists are interested, and I teach the
kiddies to avoid that area like the plague.  I have heard rumours that
some people use the facility, in non-portable applications.

Regards,
Nick Maclaren.