HP Fortran bug

[ajs at hpfcla.UUCP]

This is posted on behalf of the Hewlett Packard Computer  Languages Lab.
It is in response to an earlier  complaint  here about the HP9000 Series
500  FORTRAN  compiler.  Note that I  previously  posted a more  general
description of the bug in fopen(3s), USG System III version.

Alan Silverstein, Hewlett-Packard Fort Collins Systems Division, Colorado
{ihnp4 | hplabs}!hpfcla!ajs, 303-226-3800 x3053, N 40 31'31" W 105 00'43"

	Problem:   If a super-user with umask of 022 runs a FORTRAN 
		   compile (on the Series 500) such as "fc myfile.f", 
		   the root removes group and others write permission on 
		   /dev/null.  This has the effect of preventing non-
		   super-users from running the compiler.

	Reason:    An fopen("/dev/null","w+") call causes umask to be
		   applied to /dev/null's file permissions.  This is 
		   incorrect because /dev/null already exists.  Both
		   the FORTRAN and the Pascal compilers may make calls 
		   of this type to fopen.

	Solution:  Umask will not be applied to a file that already 
		   exists by an fopen "w+" (create for update) call
		   under HP-UX version 4.0.  Until then, a super-user
		   with a non-zero umask will usually have to reset the
		   file permissions ("chmod +rw /dev/null") after a 
		   FORTRAN or a Pascal compile.
   
                   From: CLL Technical Support Group