Re: [Patch, libfortran] Thread safety and simplification of error printing

["N.M. Maclaren" <nmm1@cam.ac.uk>]

On May 8 2011, Janne Blomqvist wrote:
>>
>> It's theoretically insoluble, given the constraints you are working
>> under.  Sorry.  It is possible to do reasonably well, but there will
>> always be likely scenarios where all you can do is to say "Aargh!
>> I give up."
>
>Well, I realize perfection is impossible, so I'm settling for merely
>improving the status quo!

Very reasonable, given the problem.  Where the effort increases rapidly
with the reliability, not being too fancy is a sound strategy.

>I think in our case the situation is a bit easier in that we're not
>trying to recover from a serious failure, merely print some diagnostic
>information without getting stuck in a deadlock.

I wasn't trying to do much more!  I was mainly trying to maximise the
chances of files being closed cleanly and appropriate diagnostics
being produced.  Once there was a serious error, I didn't allow the
program to continue.  But I did allow user-written exception handlers
(which could only return - NOT jump out).  Even that was hard enough :-(

Regards,
Nick Maclaren.