Subject: SC22 N2609 - Disposition of Comments on PDTR 15580 - Fortran Floating-Point Exception Handling

From: "william c. rinehuls" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 16:08:27 -0500 (EST)

_____________________ beginning of title page __________________________
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22
Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces
Secretariat:  U.S.A.  (ANSI)

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22
N2609

TITLE:
Disposition of Comments Report for PDTR 15580 - Information technology -
Programming languages - Floating-Point Exception Handling in Fortran

DATE ASSIGNED:
1997-11-12

SOURCE:
Secretariat, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22

BACKWARD POINTER:
N/A

DOCUMENT TYPE:
Disposition of Comments Report

PROJECT NUMBER:
JTC 1.22.02.01.02

STATUS:
The revised PDTR has been forwarded for ISO/IEC JTC 1 ballot.

ACTION IDENTIFIER:
FYI

DUE DATE:
N/A

DISTRIBUTION:
Text

CROSS REFERENCE:
SC22 N2430

DISTRIBUTION FORM:
Def

Address reply to:
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Secretariat
William C. Rinehuls
8457 Rushing Creek Court
Springfield, VA 22153 USA
Telephone:  +1 (703) 912-9680
Fax:  +1 (703) 912-2973
email:  [email-masked]

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    Disposition of Comments Report on Approval Ballot for PDTR 15580:
Information technology - Programming languages - Floating-Point Exception
                            Handling in Fortran

1. Introduction

Some minor changes have been made to the draft in response to the ballot  
and some significant changes have been made in response to a private
communication from Malcolm Cohen of Nag, Oxford, UK.  All changes have
been approved by WG5.

2. Ballot comments

1.  The comment accompanying the affirmative vote from the United
    Kingdom was: "The title should be changed to 'Floating Point Exception
    Handling in Fortran'".

	Response:  This change has been made.

2.  DIN comments on JTC 1/SC22 N2319 (PDTR Floating Point Exception
    Handling)

    Page 1:
    The document does not commence with a statement along the lines of
    WG5/N1152, section 3.  This should be added.

	Response:  This has been added as a paragraph in the Foreword.

    Page 9:
    Check/update edits to refer to WG5/N1191 or X3J3/96-007r1.

	Response:  Checks were made, but no changes needed.

3.	Malcolm Cohen's comments:

	Problem A: (Major)

    There seems to be a confusing duplication of functionality plus  
    missing functionality as follows:

	Missing functionality:
	(4) no IEEE_REM

	Response:  IEEE_REM has been added as an extra function.

	Problem B: (Minor)

    (a) The semantics of IEEE_SUPPORT_SQRT are buried in 15.7 "IEEE
    arithmetic".  I was lucky to spot them at all. 15.9.28 just says  
    "supports" (without mentioning the SQRT intrinsic), and 15.7 says that
    it means that the SQRT intrinsic returns -0.0 for SQRT(-0.0).

    (b)  Is the only requirement on SQRT for IEEE_SUPPORT_SQRT to return
    .TRUE. the return value for negative zero?  What about the accuracy
    requirement in the IEEE standard? You could just say that SQRT must
    return the value specified by IEEE for the square root operation and
    give the SQRT(-0.0) value as an example.

    Response:  The wording of 15.7 has been changed and slight changes  
    have been made to and the detailed description of IEEE_SUPPORT_SQRT.

	Problem C: (Minor)

    IEEE_IS_FINITE, IEEE_IS_NAN, IEEE_IS_NEGATIVE, IEEE_IS_NORMAL
    are all described as "Elemental function" but in each case the Result
    Characteristics are "Default logical scalar".  It should just be  
    "Default logical".

	Response: The suggested changes have been made.

	Problem D: (More of an editorial quibble than a problem...)

    The document does not appear to follow the ISO/IEC guidelines -  
    missing the mandatory sections "Forward" and "Scope", no "Normative
    references" section to list the F95 and IEEE 754 standards,
    "Rationale" section instead of an "Introduction" section.

	Response:  The suggested changes have been made.

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