Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!cica!iuvax!silver!boylanr From: boylanr@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (ross boylan) Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran Subject: Re: Fortran -vs- C (yet again) Message-ID: Date: 26 Nov 90 23:06:14 GMT References: <1990Nov24.002836.19739@ariel.unm.edu> <1270009@hpcllmv.HP.COM> Sender: news@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu Lines: 19 On the idea that we can program in C and call Fortran language subroutines: 1) The different conventions about which subsripts vary fastest (i.e., in ARRAY(A,B,C), does C or A vary fastest?) seem to make this extrememly tricky, unless the language interface does lots of time-consuming twiddling. My personal experience was with the PL/I interface to VS Fortran on an IBM mainframe, but I think similar issues apply to C. Is there a good solution? 2) You can only only convert libraries to C if source is available; IMSL is getting rather restrictive about this on their latest release. It is my impression that at least IMSL's code is tuned for particular machines and compilers; it seems unlikely a translation would be as effective. 3) In the case of the PL/I-Fortran interface, the overhead of cross-language calls was enormous (I recall I converted a 3 second pure Fortran program into a 60 second mixed-language, functionally equivalent program).