🚀 go-pugleaf

ThadSmith@acm.org writes:
> This seems a brilliant deduction on Mark's part,

Er, thanks.  I wasn't the only one to say it, though.

> but a sad comment on the state of the Standard that one has to invoke
> such elaborate and twisted probing and reasoning of the Standard to answer
> a simple question.

Well, the quote first posted by me and others answers the question.
The elaboration comes only when one has to show that this particular
unusual function *isn't* an exception to it.

> >                        |  "Just because the standard provides a cliff in
> >                        |   front of you, you are not necessarily required
> >                        |   to jump off it."             -- Norman Diamond
> 
> But why does the standard provide the cliff in the first place?

Sharp tools generally provide cliffs to jump off. :-)  And standards
documents are, after all, generally written by humans who have a limited
number of years to do the job in.  For all the defects I've seen reported
in the standard, I still say they did a darned good job.
-- 
Mark Brader                 Summary of issue:  Fix FORTRAN-8x.
msb@sq.com                  Committee Response:  This proposal contains
SoftQuad Inc.                       insurmountable technical errors.
Toronto                     -- X3J11 responses to 2nd public review

My text in this article is in the public domain.