Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!rutgers!cmcl2!lanl!jlg
From: jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran versus C for numerical analysis
Message-ID: <3491@lanl.gov>
Date: 13 Sep 88 18:58:27 GMT
References: <1454@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu>
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 25

From article <1454@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu>, by davis@galaxy.ee.rochester.edu (Al Davis):
> Any language is cryptic if you don't know it.  I like the C terse syntax.
> I find it interesting that Fortran users who complain loudest about often
> are mathematicians who use lots of terse, cryptic math notation in their
> writings.  [...]

This is a discussion about programming for numerical analysis.  I would
argue that if any terse syntax is used at all, it should be the one that
mathematicians and physicists use - not a new one invented from the strange
mind of an AT&T type.  If you can't do the terse syntax that is really
used by mathemeticians, you shouldn't have a terse syntax at all.  

But that wasn't my complaint about C.  The C syntax is not desireable
because the operator precidence doesn't follow any sensible rules.  For
example, left-to-right would imply that prefix operators should have
higher precidence than postfix - that's not how it was done though.

> never use single precision anyway, it is not accurate enough.) [...]

Single precision on the Cray carries 48 bits of precision and 15 bits of
exponent.  That's more than accurate enough for any work presently being
done on those toy VAXen.

J. Giles
Los Alamos