Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!hao!gatech!hubcap!fpst
From: fpst@hubcap.UUCP (Steve Stevenson)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Array representation and language dependencies
Message-ID: <1060@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: 3 Mar 88 13:20:55 GMT
References: <9812@tekecs.TEK.COM>
Organization: Clemson University, Clemson, SC
Lines: 15

in article <9812@tekecs.TEK.COM>, andrew@frip.gwd.tek.com (Andrew Klossner) says:
> 
> Not so.  The Fortran EQUIVALENCE statement lets the programmer overlay
> data onto an array.  To make this work, the Fortran standards specify
> that arrays must be stored in contiguous memory in column-major order.

That's only part of the reason.  The initial reason that column major
is used is that in real live linear algebra, a matrix is consider as
column oriented.  That is, unless otherwise specified a 2-d matrix
is a sequence of columns.  EQUIVALENCE came later.

-- 
Steve Stevenson                            fpst@hubcap.clemson.edu
(aka D. E. Stevenson),                     fpst@clemson.csnet
Department of Computer Science,            comp.hypercube
Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-1906 (803)656-5880.mabell