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From: wes@obie.UUCP (Barnacle Wes)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: F77 Compilers for MS-DOS PC's
Summary: MS-Fortran, etc...
Keywords: ms-dos fortran f77
Message-ID: <176@obie.UUCP>
Date: 31 Aug 88 03:39:04 GMT
References: <184@limbic.UUCP> <102@simsdevl.UUCP> <13633@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Distribution: na
Organization: the Well of Souls
Lines: 31

In article <184@limbic.UUCP> gil@limbic.UUCP (Gil Kloepfer Jr.) writes:
> One company I do work for is looking for a F77 compiler for a PC / PC clone.
> I would appreciate any suggestions from the net as to compilers they have
> used and liked, or compilers to avoid.

In article <13633@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, link@sag4.ssl.berkeley.edu (Richard Link) writes:
> I bought Microsoft 3.20 and upgraded to 3.31. Both stink. Neither versions
> are ANSI F77. 3.31 is a subset of F77, and has CHARACTER variables, although
> does not allow substring operations. Based on my experience with these
> versions, I decided not to upgrade to 4.0, which is reputably a full F77.

I have used MS-Fortran 4.0 at work.  It is MUCH, MUCH better than MS 3.2
and/or 3.3, which were based on an old Pascal implementation of Fortran
(from the P-system maybe?).  The new compiler handles most of ANSI
subset Fortran pretty well, including real support for character
variables (3.2 and 3.3 did not allow concatenation with //).  The
compiler does not really seem very robust, but it did work OK on
straightforward code.

I have read good reviews of the 286/386 Fortran compilers from Green
Hills and from MicroWay.  You may want to look at back issues of Dr.
Dobb's Journal and/or Computer Language, one or both of them had reviews
of Fortran systems for 286/386 computers recently (within the last 8
months or so).

If you have a 386 machine, get a 386 compiler - you loose all this crap
about "huge" arrays.  And get MUCH better performance, to boot!
-- 
                     {hpda, uwmcsd1}!sp7040!obie!wes
           "Happiness lies in being priviledged to work hard for
           long hours in doing whatever you think is worth doing."
                         -- Robert A. Heinlein --