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From: mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Re: FORTRAN horrors (character
Message-ID: <50500049@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 27 Apr 88 14:11:00 GMT
References: <6690016@hpclcdb.HP.COM>
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Nf-ID: #R:hpclcdb.HP.COM:6690016:uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:50500049:000:1697
Nf-From: uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald    Apr 27 09:11:00 1988



>It looks like Mr. Giles is assuming shared libraries and sophisticated
>optimizing compilers; Bob and Bill seem to be worrying about PC-DOS* as it 
>exists today (relatively dumb compilers and libraries on a small address space 
>machine).  I suspect that Fortran 8x is targetted above PC-DOS, but should
>work on more modern architectures.  For one thing, Leahy (among others) says
>that it is just bearly possible to do the industry standard extensions to
>full FORTRAN 77 on PC-DOS - being concerned about doing F8x on it is an
>argument for nothing more than a few small extensions to F77.  While some
>people favor that, I feel that being constrained by an architecture on its
>last legs (see OS/2 P.R. from a couple companies that shall go nameless)
>would be seriously irresponsible on the part of X3J3.  The design rules
>(largely unwritten - F8x started before rationale documents were part of the
>standards process) that seem to be used :

I don't see how Fortran-anything can be "targeted" to a particular machine.
It is supposed to be a general, standard, language for scientific and
engineering use. Since the IBM PC is the most common computer in existence,
and since lots of them are used for science and engineering, it essentially
HAS to run on them. PC's have a BIG address space: 500K is not very
constraining for a compiler, or at least it shouldn't be. Hasn't anybody
ever heard of writing temporary files on disks? My PDP-11's get about
90% of Fortran 77 done in 45Kbytes! I find it IMPOSSIBLE to belive that
500K is any constraint at all, except of course on the brain-power
requirements of compiler writers (and that it could slow down compiles a 
bit).

Doug McDonald