Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!rex!wuarchive!udel!udccvax1!mccalpin
From: mccalpin@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (John D Mccalpin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: The worst compiler in the whole wide world
Message-ID: <6696@vax1.acs.udel.EDU>
Date: 6 Jul 90 15:54:39 GMT
References: <1168@umriscc.isc.umr.edu>
Reply-To: mccalpin@vax1.udel.edu (John D Mccalpin)
Organization: College of Marine Studies, Univ. of Delaware
Lines: 24

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
> Does anybody know if later versions (we seem to be stuck with 1.0) solve
> any of the many problems.

Your problem is that you have an early release.  The compiler is based
on the MIPS f77 compiler, which is actually quite good.  Unfortunately,
their early releases had some nasty bugs, and DEC added more when they
ported it to Ultrix.

The bugs were of the nature that they did not touch many/most programs,
so many users were quite happy with the compiler.  Most of the trouble
was with the lesser-used features fof Fortran.  I got bit with bugs
in ENTRY and alternate RETURN features.

Get the new compiler and you will be much happier.  Of course, if you
want the *latest* releases, you will have to buy a MIPS computer system,
but DEC (and SGI) are generally only a few months behind MIPS in their
revisions of f77.
-- 
John D. McCalpin                               mccalpin@vax1.udel.edu
Assistant Professor                            mccalpin@delocn.udel.edu
College of Marine Studies, U. Del.             mccalpin@scri1.scri.fsu.edu