Currently, \ are treated by default as C-style escape characters with some
special treatment to allow foo = "\"
At least for Windows paths, the result of path = 'c:\windows\somewhere\big.txt'
is surprising as the \w remains but the \b is replaced.
I believe one should give a warning that \w does not match anything.
Additionally, we should consider to default to -fbackslash - at least on
Windows. Note additionally that "\" belongs to Fortran 2003 standard Fortran
character set. Currently we offer:
-fno-backslash
Change the interpretation of backslashes in string literals from "C-style"
escape characters to a single backslash character.
>From the thread at
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.fortran/browse_thread/thread/c8dd08d6da052499/
Remark by Richard Maine:
Well, in f0003, backslash is part of the standard Fortran character set.
So I'll find it awfully hard to accept as reasonable a default that
doesn't conform to the standard. But then I'm one of those who has
always thought that doing backslash processing on Fortan code was an
unreasonable default, so just consider me biased.
Remark by James Van Buskirk:
Andy was kind enough to change the default to -fno-backslash for
Windows g95, following the logic that it's quite common to want to
specify paths with embedded backslashes on that platform. The
C escape sequences are mostly just an annoyance to be worked around
for Fortran programmers. As a C programmer writing a Fortran
compiler it may not always be apparent how confusing and error-prone
the C way of doing things is (to a Fortran programmer) but it is as
bad as that and worse. Same goes for internal representations of
LOGICAL variables.
--
Summary: Treat \ as normal character (at least on Windows);
diagnose unrecognized escape characters
Product: gcc
Version: 4.3.0
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Keywords: diagnostic
Severity: enhancement
Priority: P3
Component: fortran
AssignedTo: unassigned at gcc dot gnu dot org
ReportedBy: burnus at gcc dot gnu dot org
http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=34203
