Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!ncar!noao!arizona!lm
From: lm@arizona.edu (Larry McVoy)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: FORTRAN Horror
Message-ID: <4584@megaron.arizona.edu>
Date: 29 Mar 88 23:23:39 GMT
References: <1135@pembina.UUCP> <46500011@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <6630@ames.arpa>
Reply-To: lm@megaron.arizona.edu (Larry McVoy)
Organization: University of Arizona, Tucson
Lines: 58

In article <6630@ames.arpa> lamaster@ames.arc.nasa.gov.UUCP (Hugh LaMaster) writes:
>2) Fortran is modular.  Fortran subroutines are modules, and this puts
>Fortran ahead of any language (e.g. Pascal) which only has "procedures".
>Yes, both would be better.  Unfortunately, I haven't seen any vectorizing
>Modula-2 compilers for the Cray or CDC machines.  Convex does sport a
>vectorizing C compiler, however.

Umm, I'll throw in a penny here:  C has modules.  Note that the
following example defines an abstract data type, operations on the data
type, but implies nothing about how the operations work, data storage,
etc.  (Actually, whomever makes "stack.h" defines the type, but that's
a red herring.)  So C gives you all of mod-2 with none of the pain.

So what we need is a vectorizing C compiler, right?  1/2 :-)

Seriously, please don't hold up Mod-2 as an example of a good programming
language. Mod-2 sucks donkey noids is my experience after looking at big
systems written in it.  

Here's the example, if anyone cares:

---- begin stack.c ------
/*
 * stack.c - dummy C module for netnews example
 */

# include	"stack.h"		/* defines stack_t */
# include	<stdio.h>
# define	STACK_MAX		100	/* hidden */

static stack_t	stack[STACK_MAX];	/* hidden */
static int	indx = 0;		/* hidden */

/*
 * push - push a copy of the item
 */
int push(s) stack_t s; {		/* exported */
    if (indx < STACK_MAX-1) {
	stack[++indx] = s;
	return 0;
    }
    return -1;
}

/*
 * pop - return a copy of the stack top, pop.
 */
stack_t pop() {
    static stack_t null;	/* zero-ed for error return */

    if (indx > 0)
	return stack[--indx];
    return null;
}
----- end stack.c ------
-- 

Larry McVoy	lm@arizona.edu or ...!{uwvax,sun}!arizona.edu!lm