Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!ihnp4!homxb!hropus!ki4pv!codas!novavax!hcx1!hcx2!bill
From: bill@hcx2.SSD.HARRIS.COM
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: F8X response (long)
Message-ID: <44400017@hcx2>
Date: 22 Feb 88 14:11:00 GMT
References: <705@elxsi.UUCP>
Lines: 39
Nf-ID: #R:elxsi.UUCP:705:hcx2:44400017:000:2323
Nf-From: hcx2.SSD.HARRIS.COM!bill    Feb 22 09:11:00 1988


/* Written 11:04 am  Feb 19, 1988 by ags@j.cc.purdue.edu.UUCP */
> [note:  I am posting this for a friend who maintains a very large body of
> FORTRAN code -- DAS]
>  
>    Include type statements are NOT found on all compilers. The Cyber 205
> FTN200 compiler (a Fortran 77 compiler with some very, very nice
> vector extensions) doesn't have such a command. The reason becomes
> fairly obvious when when you look at the operating system.
>  
>    The computer is intended to be used for large scale number crunching,
> and is in fact provides a terrific environment for this. However, several
> peculiarities of the operating system make it an abysmal interactive
> environment. (You can only have about 200 files in your area, and the
> terminal interface renders implementation of a screen-oriented editor
> impossible.) Furthermore, files used by programs are must be preattached
> by job control language; files are not automatically available to
> the program. This means that on this machine, if an "include" facility
> was made part of the compiler, you would have to pre-attach them and/or
> transfer each of them from the front-end as part the the compilation jcl.
> This would makes the jcl pretty horrid.

Hmmm.  Sounds like the Cyber 205 is going to have trouble with MODULEs too.
Since MODULEs can be compiled once, then USEd many times, the compiler
necessarily must maintain the results of the MODULE compilation somewhere,
presumably in a file.  So, I think your criticism of INCLUDE vs. MODULE
is somewhat spurious.  Whether it is "source" or "object" or something
in between that is being reused, the compiler will have to have dynamic
access to named data -- which we usually think of as a file.  The _only_
difference between MODULE and INCLUDE, in this respect, is that with
INCLUDE, the programmer has to name the file, while with MODULE the compiler
gets to choose a name.

Anyway, if what you say is really true, then how could a FORTRAN program
OPEN a file?  It must be able to do this if it conforms to FORTRAN 77,
and according to my Cyber FTN200 manual, it can.  I further believe that,
if there is any operating system in use today that cannot "dynamically"
open and access files by name, they will either quickly acquire the
capability or they will not long survive.  Technology marches on.