(SC22WG14.323) Re: reaction to Variable Length Array Proposal

[Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB)]

As was pointed out to me off-line, one of the main reasons people
are asking for "preservation of the Fortran calling order" (which
by the way is backwards from most of the Fortran library functions
I once designed) is that they expect automatic Fortran-to-C
converters to be applied to existing Fortran code and these
converters are not smart enough to remap calling sequences.
Another reason offered is that existing Fortran library documentation
could still be reasonably used by human C coders if the order were
preserved.  (Of course it could also be used if the interface map
were described by simple rules, e.g. all dimension arguments follow
all other arguments but otherwise the order is the same as Fortran.)

I don't much buy these arguments but out of fairness they should be
understood.