Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!ncar!noao!amethyst!spock!chris
From: chris@spock (Chris Ott)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: FORTRAN horrors
Message-ID: <502@amethyst.UUCP>
Date: 30 Mar 88 19:43:40 GMT
Sender: uucp@amethyst.UUCP
Reply-To: chris@spock.ame.arizona.edu (Chris Ott)
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Organization: Computer-Aided Engr. Lab (CAEL), University of Arizona, Tucson
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ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes in response to my article:

>> WRITE, and CLOSE were the same. Even the I/O itself isn't done the same:
>> Sun Fortran is the only one I know that writes the record length at the
>> beginning and the end of an unformatted record.
>
> In the B6700 MCP, this was FILETYPE=6 ("Fortran Linkword").  I thought it
> was fairly common: how else are you supposed to be able to seek in such a
> file?  With the size at each end of the record, you can move forwards AND
> backwards a record at a time.

     I never said it was a bad idea. I just said it wasn't standard. Most
Fortrans I know don't do this. It was just one example of how non-standard
Fortran I/O can be. If anybody wants more examples, I can dig them up.

     The point of my article was: Fortran should be used for certain problems
and C should be used for other problems. Each language has its own domain. It
bothers me when people start saying that some language is the best for
everything.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Chris Ott
 Computer-Aided Engr. Lab       "Blessed is he who is rich in spirit,
 University of Arizona             for he shall make dough."
                                                            Robert Heinlein

 Internet: chris@spock.ame.arizona.edu
 UUCP: {allegra,cmcl2,hao!noao}!arizona!amethyst!spock!chris
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