Topic: "Compilation completed" message not appearing under some circumstances in Plato

I was compiling a program using the latest ftn95 v. 4.9 and the Plato which is bundled with it and found that after some warning messages the final message 'Compilation completed' did not appear. I assumed that somehow the compilation had got into a loop, but in fact it had created a perfectly good .obj file which went to execute all right. It took me quite sometime to discover that the compilation was actually being completed.

I have reduced my source code to the following few lines:

  program test
  x = 1
  a= g(x)
  write(*,*) a
  stop
  end
  real function g(x)
  g = 5
  return
  end

This produces only the warning that 'The argument X has not been used' and no compilation completed message appears. If you change g=5 to g=x then there is of course no warning and I get the compilation completed message.

On a general point, Build produces the message:

Creating executable: ...

as its final message. This wording gives the impression to the beginner that an executable is in the process of being created, so they wait for a message confirming that it has been created. Perhaps a confirmatory message could be added, or have only a confirmatory message saying 'executable created: ...'

Zahid Aziz