Public Comment Number PC-UK0156 ISO/IEC CD 9899 (SC22N2620) Public Comment =========================================== Date: 1998-02-25 Author: N.M Maclaren Author Affiliation: Self Postal Address: University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory, New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB3 3QG, United Kingdom E-mail Address: Telephone Number: +44 1223 334761 Fax Number: +44 1223 334679 Number of individual comments: 1 Comment 1. Category: Normative change to existing feature retaining the original intent Committee Draft subsection: Annex F Title: Permitting diagnostics for uncleared exception flags Detailed description: One of the assumptions in the IEEE 754 model is that exception flags will eventually be either cleared or diagnosed, and this is required by LIA-1. Fortran does not specify what may be written to 'standard error', but C does, and many vendors regard the standard as forbidding them from issuing diagnostics in this case. H.3.1.1 Indicators states that C permits an implementation to do this, but provides no hint as to how. I suggest adding the following: If any of the exception flags are set on normal termination after all calls to functions registered by the atexit function have been made (see 7.14.4.3), and stderr is still open, the implementation may write some diagnostics indicating the fact to stderr. If this is NOT done, then H.3.1.1 should be corrected, or clarified to explain how such a diagnostic can be produced.