Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!comp.vuw.ac.nz!windy!srwmspw
From: SRWMSPW@windy.dsir.govt.nz
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: The worst compiler in the whole wide world
Message-ID: <16745@windy.dsir.govt.nz>
Date: 6 Jul 90 15:11:19 GMT
References: <1168@umriscc.isc.umr.edu>
Organization: DSIR, Wellington, New Zealand
Lines: 48

0In article <1168@umriscc.isc.umr.edu>, acar@ee.umr.edu writes:
> In article <2330.26922b0b@csc.anu.oz> you write:
> |>In article <16430@windy.dsir.govt.nz>, SRWMSPW@windy.dsir.govt.nz writes:
> |>> 
> |>> 	Whats the worst fortran compiler in the whole wide world?
> |>> 
> |>> 	ANSWER: THE DEC F77 ULTRIX RISC COMPILER
> |>> 
> |>> 	In 20 years of scientific computing i have experienced some 
> |>> bad ones (IBM H extended springs to mind) but never never anything this bad.
> |>> 
> |>> Does anybody know if later versions (we seem to be stuck with 1.0) solve
> |>> any of the many problems.
> |>
> |>
> |>So what's wrong with it?
> |>I'm using it on a DECStation 3100 and it works fine, some minor bugs
> |>but nothing major.
> 
> Me too. Moreover, it is about three times faster than the compiler we
> have on a Sparcstation 1.
> 
> *********************************************************************
> 
> L. Acar --- Univ. of Missouri-Rolla
> 
> *********************************************************************
> --
> ******************************************************************
> 
> L. Acar --- Univ. of Missouri-Rolla

	I have had a large response to my original posting most of it 
 disagreeing (some more strongly than others ) with my posting.
 
 It would seem that the early versions of the compiler did indeed have a
 number of bugs but these are fixed at version 2. 

 many people felt that becuase namelists were not part of the fortran 77
 standard then i had no right to expect them to work.

 I still feel that if a compiler claims to support an extension such as
 namelists then I have ever right to expect them to work.

 I would rather a compiler recognised what was too hard for it to optimize
 and did not try.

Stephen White