Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!convex!mozart!psmith From: psmith@mozart.uucp (Presley Smith) Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran Subject: Re: Two Fortran Standards Message-ID: <1624@convex.UUCP> Date: 29 Aug 89 18:26:25 GMT References: <282@unmvax.unm.edu> <303@unmvax.unm.edu> <1598@convex.UUCP> <123897@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Sender: usenet@convex.UUCP Reply-To: psmith@convex.com (Presley Smith) Organization: Convex Computer Corporation, Richardson, Tx. Lines: 66 In article <123897@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> khb@sun.UUCP (Keith Bierman - Advanced Languages - Floating Point Group ) writes: > >If you are concerned about having any reasonable chance to write your >code in a language which allows for better libraries, easier to use >programatic interfaces, and have a reasonable expectation of having >your code port (remainder removed...) I think the information that continues be missed in these debates is that there is NO MAGIC in Fortran 8x. There have been a LOT of new facilities created (and not yet implemented by anyone...) to do many of the things that Keith says... but it's NOT FOR FREE. To use the new facilities, YOU will have to modify and, in some cases, rewrite your code. When you do that, you are either going to go with: 1. A more "pure" Modern Fortran 8x STYLE in which case, you will probably rewrite major portions of your code, OR 2. You are going to use a MIXTURE of Fortran 8x and FORTRAN 77/66 and will live with any problems such a mixture may bring. If you mix FORTRAN 77 and Fortran 8x, then the quote from a previous article by Walt Brainerd applies: "If it had been done (Fortran 8x as a separate standard), a very different standard would have been developed. Fortran 8x has been kludged to death, creating some horrible messes trying to accommodate those who want to make all of the features of F77 be integrated with the new ones." So, mixing of FORTRAN 77 and Fortran 8x is not without it's problems. (Just a side note for those of you who don't know... Walt Brainerd is one of the officers of the X3J3 committee. He's the director of "Technical Work and Language Integration.") If you are going to rewrite your code into the more Modern Fortran 8x, then you have the situation that one of my users found when he read the proposed standard: "My first impression after reading through the proposed standard is that this 'Fortran' is a language with which I am not familiar. There have been so many additions to the language that I think it would be possible to write a standard conforming program that an experienced Fortran programmer would have difficulty recognizing." So, producing pure Modern Fortran 8x programs is not without it's problems either. I know of several companies that are evaluating what language they will be using in new development and some of them are turning to C and Ada because of Fortran 8x. Not because the standard is late, but because it is a new language and in order to really use the new features, they must make significant changes in their source codes anyway. Faced with having to do major work on their code anyway to use the new features of Fortran 8x, some are currently planning to rewrite their codes in C or Ada instead. You should try Ada, Keith. You'd love it and it's available today. You don't have to wait for Fortran 8x. Ada was DESIGNED to have all the capabilities you want in FORTRAN. They were not ADDED ON as in Fortran 8x. In Ada, all the features are integrated and all work as one language.