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From: guy@sun.uucp
Newsgroups: net.lang.f77
Subject: Re: Translator from Rat4 to F77?
Message-ID: <2290@sun.uucp>
Date: Tue, 11-Jun-85 02:03:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.2290
Posted: Tue Jun 11 02:03:59 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Jun-85 00:39:44 EDT
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Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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> >> Hmmm... Has Ratfor been improved in the last few years? The Ratfor which
> >> came with our v7 system produces FORTRAN 66 as its output, not f77.
> >> 
> >> This means that the resulting program is often a maze of GOTO's.
> >
> >F66 is pretty much a proper subset of F77; that's the sense in which Rat4
> >produces F77.  It produces code that should be compilable under either
> >compiler, assuming that the "plain FORTRAN" part of the code is compilable
> >under either compiler.
> 
> I still maintain, however, that the output is really FORTRAN 66 in that it
> takes advantage of none of the features added in f77, such as the
> IF-THEN-ELSE construct.
> (Discussion of using "struct" followed by "ratfor" as a technique for
> turning extremely old unstructured FORTRAN into structured F77)

A tool to do the aforementioned transformation might be nice, but it's not
what RATFOR was intended as.  RATFOR was intended as a way to write
structured FORTRAN even if you had an F66 compiler; in fact, I believe the
Software Tools book gives an address to send away to to get a RATFOR
preprocessor written in F66.  As such, there wasn't much motivation to make
a RATFOR preprocessor that uses block IF.  (Besides, nobody's done much with
the UNIX RATFOR preprocessor in a while; the only difference between the
4.2BSD "ratfor" and the S5R2 "ratfor", other than the shape of SCCS IDs and
other minor cosmetic changes, is a small tweak to avoid generating redundant
"goto"s.)  It was never intended to be used as part of a structuring tool to
take old FORTRAN and turn it into F77.  If you want such a tool, why not
dive into "struct" and make a version that generates F77 instead of RATFOR?

	Guy Harris