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From: landers@cevax.berkeley.edu (Joe Landers)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: FORTRAN 8x
Message-ID: <21861@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Thu, 19-Nov-87 14:58:56 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.21861
Posted: Thu Nov 19 14:58:56 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Nov-87 08:19:25 EST
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: landers@cevax.berkeley.edu (Joe Landers)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 36

mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
    >... If C were not designed for scientific programming, why would it
    >have Bessel functions?

Bessel functions are not part of the C language, they part of the C
math library.  The FORTRAN language supports "intrinsic" math functions.
It makes these functions much easier to use.  In C, the math library 
functions are not intrinsic, so you have to remember to include <math.h>
or declare them "double" or else you'll get meaningless results.

cik@l.cc.purdue.edu writes:
    >The article gives 21 FORTRAN features slated for eventual deletion.
    >Some of them I have not used, but about 15 of them are simple 
    >constructs, easy to use, and not easily replaced by anything 
    >reasonable.  I suspect that another person will find the same
    >about the ones I have not appreciated.  We need more powerful
    >languages, not language police.

Could you please give some examples?  From reading the X3.9 document,
I get the impression that the committee WANTS to provide a lot of
flexibility in the language without removing old features.  They 
are interested in keeping the standard as "upwardly compatible" as
possible.

Of course the current vote is on 8x, but consider this proposal for
FORTRAN 9x.  Suppose in 9x, that code is marked as 'contains old 
features' or 'contains no old features' on a subprogram by subprogram
basis.  The standard might say: "If it's got an 'old features' than it
must work as it did before but it can't contain any 'new features.'"
This way, the language could stay reasonably small and still provide
compatibility for older FORTRAN programs.  Would this be satisfactory?
Just a thought.  I don't think ANSI could ever justify removing 
any construct from the language.

joe landers
landers@cardinal.berkeley.edu