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From: gl8f@astsun9.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: How to make a language downward-extensible?
Message-ID: <1990Oct8.034201.2631@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Date: 8 Oct 90 03:42:01 GMT
References: <29047:Sep2816:51:1290@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <1990Oct2.024511.10082@cbnewsc.att.com> <899:Oct800:50:3590@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
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In article <899:Oct800:50:3590@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:

>Well, okay, but that doesn't help the programmer who's trying to write
>portable code. Some extensions, like vector processing, won't be
>standardized for a very, very long time. Does that mean the programmer
>shouldn't be able to write code that will take advantage of vectors when
>they're around? Does it mean that all such code must be unportable?

That's funny, the FORTRAN community wrote standards for vector
processing quite a while ago. You have the BLAS libraries, you have
the future F9X, and oddly enough Cray seems to have little trouble
writing a compiler which totally vectorizes my hydrodynamics code
which is written in portable fortran.

Perhaps what you want is already available: pick a library interface,
write portable versions, and develop machine-specific versions as you
go along. Smart compilers can inline routines so it will even be
efficient. And it's certainly portable.



--
"Restraint, hell. I'm just too fucking busy." -- Bill Wisner