[MPIWG Fortran] MPI_SIZEOF: redux

[Malcolm Cohen]

>Lots of user codes are using mpif.h

So what has that got to do with deprecating MPI_SIZEOF?  Nothing whatsoever.

>Maybe you don't have lots of users

Astonishing language.  Again, nothing to do with deprecating MPI_SIZEOF.  And I 
was not even advocating that!

Not to mention that not a single one of those people using the so-called F77 
binding are using a mere FORTRAN 77 compiler.  Even the INCLUDE "mpi.h" line is 
a Fortran 90 feature that is not present in FORTRAN 77.

>Do the MPI C bindings violate K&R?

Yes.

> They definitely work with C89,

I should hope so too...

> which is older than F90

... since C89 and F90 are (pretty obviously by the names) basically 
contemporaries.

>, so age arguments are not valid here.

You just made one!

Anyway, since the so-called F77 binding requires the compiler to have Fortran 90 
features, whether Fortran 77 had STORAGE_SIZE is hardly relevant to the question 
of what to do with MPI_SIZEOF.  What being relevant would seem to be whether 
there is an alternative that is universally available, whether that alternative 
is actually better to use, and whether it is time to start steering users 
towards it, by means of deprecating MPI_SIZEOF.

But since STORAGE_SIZE is far from universally available, this falls at the very 
first hurdle.  (And alternative ways of computing sizeof in e.g. pure Fortran 90 
are, although easy to write, not particularly convenient to use, so those fall 
at the second hurdle.)

Cheers,
-- 
................................Malcolm Cohen, Nihon NAG, Tokyo.