Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!mtunx!mtune!codas!novavax!hcx1!hcx2!bill
From: bill@hcx2.SSD.HARRIS.COM
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: FORTRAN horrors (character init
Message-ID: <44400019@hcx2>
Date: 18 Apr 88 13:46:00 GMT
References: <574@a.UUCP>
Lines: 23
Nf-ID: #R:a.UUCP:574:hcx2:44400019:000:1028
Nf-From: hcx2.SSD.HARRIS.COM!bill    Apr 18 08:46:00 1988


jlg@a.UUCP writes:
> This is certainly an 8x feature that no one will
> object to. 

Don't bet on this.

> Actually, most of the vendors on the committee probably DO object to the
> new 8x feature.  Some of them don't have compile-time access to the run-time
> math library.  oh well...

One can always get access, but do users want to pay the price?  Consider
that FORTRAN 8x increases the size of the runtime library significantly,
so the compiler is going to be substantially bigger just from that effect
alone (not counting the increase in size due to more language features).
I think it is quite possible that a complete implementation of FORTRAN 8x
will be impossible on most micros, just due to memory limitations.

Consider, for example, that the compiler must have a version of SIN() for
every precision the compiler supports.  This could be significant on a
machine that fully supports IEEE floating point.  Now add to this COS(),
ATAN(), etc.  Do you want your FORTRAN compiler to take tens of Mbytes
of YOUR memory?