Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!pyrdc!pyrnj!rutgers!cmcl2!lanl!jlg
From: jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran versus C for numerical analysis
Message-ID: <3631@lanl.gov>
Date: 15 Sep 88 17:25:29 GMT
References: <13570@mimsy.UUCP>
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 20

From article <13570@mimsy.UUCP>, by chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek):
> Sometimes (many people will break up ten-line expressions for the sake
> of clarity).  Nonetheless, there are two problems being solved:
> overriding the default groupings, and specifying order of operation.
> Any time you use a single solution for two (or more) orthogonal
> problems, you have missed out on some potential orthogonality.

This is true.  But if you omit a functionality completely simply because
you don't want to overload some part of the syntax - you haven't done
the users any favors either.  In fact, the parenthesis rule in Fortran
is quite useful and is well understood by most programmers (because
almost all languages except C have the same rule).  Inserting parenthesis
for clarity does indeed impeed optimization somewhat - but not as much
as you might think.  The only real case is when common sub-expressions
are parenthesized differently so that they can't be folded together.
The lack of grouping for precision control would pose a _much_ more
serious problem.

J. Giles
Los Alamos