Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!apple!agate!shelby!csli!poser From: poser@csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: Fortran vs. C for numerical work Message-ID: <16798@csli.Stanford.EDU> Date: 8 Dec 90 07:12:29 GMT References: <8258@lanl.gov> Reply-To: poser@csli.stanford.edu (Bill Poser) Organization: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford U. Lines: 20 In article <8258@lanl.gov> jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes: >Bizarre, peculiar, idiosyncratic >notation (such as is common in C) is just an impediment. > >Fortran is far from being too close to mathematical notation: it is >not close enough. It is, however, as close as the charcter set of >those early times allowed. It is certainly closer than C (and this >is one of the factors in Fortran's favor). Jim, if you'll read the past 20 messages or so you'll see that this is precisely one of the things we've been discussing. I have already asserted that neither C nor Fortran provides much direct math support, that to the extent that they do the notation is very close to mathematical notation, and that the only real difference that I can see is that in Fortran power is an infix operator as is typical in mathematics whereas in C it is a function and therefore prefixed. This is an awfully small difference, isn't it? So instead of naked assertions like the one quoted, how about some evidence and examples? And remember, we're talking about mathematical expressions, not aliasing, and not declaration syntax.