Subject: Auf Wiedersehen

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 26 Jun 92 18:50:34 -0500

I'm heading for Germany and Austria for two weeks (business, not
pleasure!), so my email access is likely to be spotty at best.  Please
don't let my absence stop the discussions.  Although I disagree with
some of these ideas, the conversation is definitely healthy.

As I see it, the straw poll now indicates:
	Strong support for generalized assignments, including nested
		FORALL, vector assignment, and vector WHERE
	No better than 50-50 support for scalar WHERE
	Better than 50-50 support for some form of conditional
		assignment, although we disagree on syntax and
		semantics for it
	A vocal minority in support of allowing very general
		statements in a FORALL, but definitely in the minority.
In outline, here's my current feeling:
	Only generalized assignments should be allowed in FORALL
	Keep talking about conditionals, we're nowhere near
		consensus.  I still favor scalar WHERE, but it seems
		I'm outvoted.  Nested IF with WHERE semantics is (barely)
		acceptable, but only if no better proposals gain support.
	All other statements should not be allowed in FORALL.  They
		can always be used in DO INDEPENDENT.

Nobody has suggested any concrete restrictions on function calls in
FORALLs, but John Merlin says he's working on something.  This should
be top priority after conditionals in FORALL.

The only comments I've gotten re: Min-You's INDEPENDENT proposal have
been positive.  I think the syntax needs some adjustment, but
otherwise it seems OK.  (INDEPENDENT is now used to mark loops and the
start of blocks; the second use should be changed to BEGIN INDEPENDENT
to avoid ambiguity.)  I'll try to generate an amended version while
I'm on the road (in the air).

I hesitate to bring up the LOCAL SUBROUTINE proposals from Guy and
Marc until we get the FORALL issues settled.

	Chuck