Years ago I wrote a Fortran 95 fixed source form program that has 19 different uses of the asterisk *, compiles and runs. Below is a Fortran 2018 version with 23 of them. It compiles and runs, though the two compilers I tried, gfortran and ifort, both gave some warnings. Are there any uses of * that…

And there I am, thinking bad of C and C++ for reusing symbols like * and & for so many purposes that I get lost even trying to imagine the first few …

Sadly, in 2023, most of our programming languages are syntactically limited by the keyboards of the 1950s, and in many cases (but not Fortran) by the properties of Dennis Ritchie’s workstation. However, I’d rather figure out the multiple meanings of * than program in Unicode ala APL. I can’t help …

You mention * for reading from standard output, but a new programmer will first use * to print or write to standard output.

A quick glance did not show NAMELIST groups and DATA statements, where it can be used as a repeat count similar to list directed input; but distinct uses IMO.

[image] urbanjost: A quick glance did not show NAMELIST groups and DATA statements, […] DATA is there, NAMELIST i/o is not. There is an example of integer i/o overflow, but maybe some floating point examples could also be included (there are several types).

My * program does write to standard output in the line that ends (6,7) but I shall have to think about NAMELIST and floating-point i/o.

Seeing them all together was a little startling even though I knew them. Finally got a chance to look at it. I think this one deserves consideration: character(len=*),parameter :: arr(*)=['aA','bB','cC'] ! length and array size on parameter This is sort of a toss-up for me … write(*,'(*(g0…

I just wanted to add the obvious, if you think * is overloaded/overused within fortran, then what is your opinion of parentheses? :slight_smile:

[image] urbanjost: write(*,'(*(g0,1x))')[1,2,3]*2**2 ! array multiplication The unlimited repeat count in that format is another case, regardless of the scalar/array question.

Overloaded asterisk

Help

certik April 25, 2023, 7:57pm 7

@Harper haha, that’s awesome. Here is one for you: Some cryptic source examples.

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Overloaded asterisk

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