🚀 go-pugleaf

> Pointers which obey bounds are worthless as dynamic memory implementors.
> The dynamic memory allocator is what _sets_ the bounds - be pretty silly
> to force it to obey them.

Since you can't implement a dynamic memory allocator portably (of course
not: it has to know what pointers look like and how to request blocks
from the O/S) who cares?

But suppose you want to implement a pool of fixed-sized memory between
malloc and the user program (say, you want to allocate 27-byte and
192-byte chunks all the time, and rarely other sizes)... with arrays?

> Nope, Nope, Nope, ....  how does the guy who wrote 'sub1' know that the
> array that will be passed has bounds 10 and 20?  Answer: he doesn't.

But that's not what you asked.

> In fact, the routine might be called many times - with a differently
> bounded array each time.  Keep looking!  You may find the answer yet!

Why? So this particular thing is easier in Fortran than in C (or, I might
add, in a bunch of other languages)... so what? I'd rather put up with
a minor inconvenience (and it is minor... the macro to do dynamic sizing
is TRIVIAL) than have to put up with all the things you just *can't* do
in Fortran.

Then again, I could work in some less-common language and find it quite
impossible to even *get* compilers for most of the machines I use, let
alone *compatible* ones. Fortran and C are about the only widely available
languages with reasonably complete portable subsets.
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 _--_|\  `-_-' Peter da Silva. +1 713 274 5180. <peter@ficc.uu.net>.
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