Templates are conceptual objects. They do not take up any storage space and must be statically defined. (This means that they do not interact well with ALLOCATABLE arrays.) One way to think of a template is as an array with zero-sized elements (which cannot be assigned to).
Templates are intended to make alignments easier and clearer. They
The ordering implied above is not strict. It is quite legal to align arrays to a template before specifying its distribution, however, the first stage must always be to declare the template. Templates are ``local entities of class (1)'' -- this means they must have a unique name, so can be host- or use-associated, however, since they are only HPF objects, they cannot be argument-associated,
Distribution of a template follows exactly the same principles as distributing an array, with respect to distribution methods, blocksizes and so forth.
There is a school of thought that says that
TEMPLATE s are an unnecessary addition to the functionality of the
language. (University of Vienna
opposed their inclusion in the HPF language.)
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