Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!cwi.nl!dik From: dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran Subject: Re: Compilation listing from Sun F77READ/NEW/FOLLOWUP Message-ID: <3705@charon.cwi.nl> Date: 15 Jun 91 00:32:27 GMT References: <1991Jun11.100327.2529@ariel.unm.edu> <954.285734d7@inland.com> Sender: news@cwi.nl Organization: CWI, Amsterdam Lines: 43 In article <954.285734d7@inland.com> jkelly@inland.com writes: > My experience of working with CTSS has got to have been one of the > worst nightmares of my computing carear. I'll take UNIX anyday. As long as the machine is interesting I'll take any OS. Although on occasion you will hear me complain about VM/CMS and upto sometime ago about NEC's SXOS. I do not know CTSS, but I have no serious complaints about systems like COS, NOS/BE and NOS/VE, apart from the kind of complaints I also have about Unix. As far as compiler listings is concerned, I am generally not pleased by compilers that generate a compiler listing by default. If possible I always turn it off (and alas, it is not always possible), to never turn it on again. I live without compiler listings, although the first system I ever used did generate a listing (directly to the printer) and you could not turn it off. (It was a compile and run kind of operating system back in the late 60's.) But that is just opinion. > I still haven't found a machine that is fast enough to make the > concept of a lot of small utilities as opposed to one extra large > utility obsolete. Besides, it gives you just one enviroment (the > shell) to learn, > instead of having to learn a separate enviroment for each big utility > that you want to use. But I can see how other people might not be > comfortable with that. No. You have still more to learn than the shell. You have to learn what options to pass to the other big utilities (like compilers). If you do not get the options right you in general can not make efficient use of the utility. (Of course there is no need to remember *all* options. At least I refuse to remember *all* options of the 'ls' command.) What is the main problem is that all those big or little utilities are not consistent from one implementation to the other. So even if you think that on Unix 'f77' is an utility that just should compile your fortran program you have to be aware that different compilers take different options. And also that identical options have different meanings. Let alone the name of the compiler. (E.g. what does 'f77 -r8' do on different systems? It varies. And never try: fortran -u *.f on an Alliant, although something similar will work on most systems. Perhaps POSIX is doing something about it but for some reason I doubt it.) -- dik t. winter, cwi, amsterdam, nederland dik@cwi.nl