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From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran versus C for numerical analysis
Message-ID: <408@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 15 Sep 88 09:59:09 GMT
References: <410@marob.MASA.COM> <3445@lanl.gov> <1484@ficc.uu.net> <14897@ames.arc.nasa.gov>
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In article <14897@ames.arc.nasa.gov> lamaster@ames.arc.nasa.gov.UUCP (Hugh LaMaster) writes:
>I still consider the lack of dynamically SIZED arrays to be a major stumbling
>block for the acceptance of C for numerical analysis.

"Algol 60 is an improvement on its successors".  Still true.
But if the lack of dynamically sized arrays didn't stop Fortran,
why complain about C?

Array parameters are another matter.  Fortran has such ``real'' arrays
that
	DIMENSION A(10)
	CALL KLUDGE(A(5), 6)
	END
	SUBROUTINE KLUDGE(B, N)
	DIMENSION B(N)
	B(1) = 0.0
	B(N) = 0.0
	RETURN
	END
is a legal program.  Is A(5) a scalar or an array?  Well, yes, sort of.

I hope *some* of the things that were going to be in Fortran 8X make it
into a standard fairly soon.  I was looking forward to having decent arrays.
[Why should we an exception library be "language-independent", when we
haven't even got a "language-independent" notion of arrays?]