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From: tnvscs@eutrc3.UUCP (c.severijns)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c,comp.lang.c,comp.arch
Subject: Re: Third public review of X3J11 C (a scientist speaks up)
Summary: C for scientific computing
Message-ID: <309@eutrc3.UUCP>
Date: 25 Aug 88 07:29:37 GMT
References: <36243@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <5282@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>
Organization: Tech. Univ. Eindhoven, Neth.
Lines: 17


We have been using C for scientific computing for some time now and so far we
only feel the need for a very few changes to the language ( we use a non-ANSI
C compiler). One of these changes is already made in the ANSI standard, the
possibility to pass a float as an argument to a function. The second change
we would like to be made is the possibility to compile C with "intrinsic"
function to be able to use a floating point processor like the MC68881 more
efficiently. This requires only an extra option for the compiler.
For the rest we consider C a good language for scientific computing that
generates code that is not much slower than FORTRAN and has the advantage of
structures. In one case were we needed complex data structures our C version
turned out to be even more than twice as fast as a similar code in FORTRAN.

Camiel Severijns				UUCP: mcvax!eutrc3!eutnv1!camiel
Surface Physics Group, Dept. of Physics
Eindhoven Universtiy of Technology
The Netherlands