Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!stealth.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: NOT Educating FORTRAN programmers to use C
Message-ID: <11962@stealth.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 24 Jan 90 05:48:56 GMT
References: <4540@scolex.sco.COM> <14206@lambda.UUCP>
Reply-To: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Distribution: usa
Organization: IR
Lines: 32

Normal Fortran has only two advantages over C, namely a wider set of
standard builtins and a larger support base. Fortran 90 loses the
support base (why did X3J3 have to change the comparison names?) and
adds just two other advantages: named loops and the multilevel break. 
Other articles list many of the advantages of C over Fortran.

In article <14206@lambda.UUCP> jlg@lambda.UUCP (Jim Giles) writes:
> From article <4540@scolex.sco.COM>, by seanf@sco.COM (Sean Fagan):
> > 	x[i] = x[i] + foo();
> > 	x[i] += foo();

If foo() changes the value of i, both of these statements are illegal in
Fortran and produce undefined results in C. This issue is moot.

> Just because C has been approved doesn't mean general availability.
> C supporters don't know what Fortran 90 offers either - why should they?

I favor C over Fortran, and I know what Fortran 90 offers. (Back in 1987
I listened to a talk on the Fortran 8X draft, and my two questions were
``Won't compilers for such a huge language be rather inefficient?'' and
``Is it really Fortran?'' The answers are ``yes'' and ``no'' respectively.)
Basically, Fortran 90 is Modula-2, Ada, Pascal, and bits of C and Fortran.
The latest draft is slightly more cleaned up but even less streamlined.
(There's a cute bumper sticker running around: BAN X3J3.)

In contrast, ANSI C feels only slightly different from K&R C. It is a
compact, efficient language.

As for aliasing, I don't see any sequential optimizations hurt by it
that shouldn't be done by hand in any case.

---Dan