Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ll-xn!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!microsoft!bobal
From: bobal@microsoft.UUCP (Bob Allison)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: FORTRAN horrors (character init
Message-ID: <1405@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 21 Apr 88 16:17:54 GMT
References: <574@a.UUCP> <44400019@hcx2>
Reply-To: bobal@microsoft, or {sun, uunet}!microsoft!bobal
Organization: Microsoft, Inc., Redmond, Washington
Lines: 40

In article <44400019@hcx2> bill@hcx2.SSD.HARRIS.COM writes:
>
>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?

Hi Bill, gotten any tickets in that new car of yours? (Shelby Daytona) ;-)
S
Well, my personal position (this must be stressed that this is not the
official position of my employer: we ain't got one yet, so there), is that
I am worried about this very issue. 

I feel that compile-time overhead will be more like an Ada compiler than
a FORTRAN 77 compiler, and I notice how few PC Ada compilers there are, and
how some of them come with extended memory boards.  My personal opinion
is that it will be really difficult to compile a real FORTRAN 8X program
which utilizes a lot of the spiffy features in 640K.  In addition I can
practically guarantee that any use of a Fortran 8X feature, even to 
perform something which could also be done easily with some set of FORTRAN 77
features, will execute slower than before (for instance, the array stuff
vs. DO loops).

So I am really worried that Fortran 8X is going to come out and all the
sudden everyone is going to be very surprised at the results, which is
one of the reasons I've gone through this long (boring) discussion.  If this
is really what people want, that is fine with me: I just don't want to be
given grief about it later when this is what you get.

So anyway, does anyone on the net do any FORTRAN programming on a PC? 

Bob Allison
"Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?..."