Terminology in Fortran error messages and options
Project / Subsystem
gcc / gcc/gfortran
Date
2026-06-06
Proposer
Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de>
Source type
public_inbox
Consensus
Proposed
Sentiment
—/10
Technical tradeoffs
- • Improvement of user experience and adherence to standards versus the effort required to identify and change all non-standard terminology.
- • Potential for minor disruption to build systems or scripts that parse existing compiler output if message formats change too drastically.
All attributes
- project
- gcc
- subsystem
- gcc/gfortran
- patch_id
- —
- discussion_id
- d47c0506-2ef0-4723-8e92-7fed34224f4e@netcologne.de
- source_type
- public_inbox
- title
- Terminology in Fortran error messages and options
- headline
- Proposes aligning gfortran error messages with Fortran standard terminology
- tldr
- Thomas Koenig suggests updating gfortran's error messages and options to use standard Fortran terminology, particularly concerning variable definition status.
- proposer
- Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de>
- consensus
- Proposed
- outcome
- proposed
- sentiment_score
- —
- technical_tradeoffs
-
- • Improvement of user experience and adherence to standards versus the effort required to identify and change all non-standard terminology.
- • Potential for minor disruption to build systems or scripts that parse existing compiler output if message formats change too drastically.
- series_id
- —
- series_role
- standalone
- series_parts
- []
- tags
-
- • gfortran
- • diagnostics
- • Fortran-standard
- • terminology
- • user-experience
- bugzilla_url
- —
- date
- 2026-06-06T00:00:00.000Z
Terminology in Fortran error messages and options
Thomas Koenig proposes a cleanup effort for gfortran’s error messages and compiler options to align them with the official Fortran standard terminology. The current messages, such as those related to uninitialized variables, often use common programming terms rather than the Fortran standard’s ‘defined’ or ‘undefined’ status. The proposal suggests consistently using standard terminology for new features and gradually updating existing ones, which would improve clarity and consistency for Fortran developers.