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From: rsb@makro.nhh.no (Roger S Bivand)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran compiler test
Message-ID: <1990Oct23.082839.9509@makro.nhh.no>
Date: 23 Oct 90 08:28:39 GMT
References: <1990Oct18.160412.8187@virtech.uucp> <6662@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> 	<1990Oct19.012745.7875@virtech.uucp> <BILL.90Oct22172249@hcx2.ssd.csd.harris.com>
Organization: Norwegian School of Economics
Lines: 24

A short comment on the original test program: both AT&T and BSD
"ar" denote their archives with lower case "arch", so the test
could never have worked. Altering the case leaves an AT&T f77 succeeding,
and Mips f77 failing. Insight is available from f2c, that is the
original source for AT&T f77 in essence. The converted c program
compiles and runs passing the test. In the Bell Labs CS Tech Report #149
of 8/2/90 (on research.att.com), the authors state "When using a machine
whose vendor provides but has gratuitously changed _libF77_ or _libI77_,
one cannot safely mix objects compiled from the C produced by f2c with
objects compiled with the vendor's Fortran compiler, and one must use
the correct libraries with programs translated by f2c" (p. 14). A
conclusion is then that by compiling via f2c and its libraries, emulation
of classical AT&T f77 behaviour may be possible. For the same reason,
programs targeted on machines not running Unix may also be rendered
portable by using f2c as a precompiler, and the lib[IF]77 in the f2c
release as the necessary libraries. There may on the other hand be
a slight efficiency loss, less I feel than the "recoding thousands of
lines of source" complaint.

Roger Bivand
Institute of Geography
Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration
Bergen, Norway
rsb@czech.nhh.no