Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: FORTRAN to C converter wanted.  Also tweaking code.
Message-ID: <1988Oct9.003149.12679@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <6441@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <372@Grumpy.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 9 Oct 88 00:31:49 GMT

In article <372@Grumpy.UUCP> wgh@Grumpy.UUCP (William G. Hutchison) writes:
>  some of the big hassles of translating FORTRAN->C are
>   (1) origin-1 indexing
>   (2) subroutine argument pass-by-reference
>   (3) variables declared by default in-line (initial ijklmn) (this is easily
>       solved by a 2-pass conversion, but why do all that work?)
>   (4) equivalencing of variables

I studied the problem at one point and concluded that all of these things
fell under the "nuisance" heading, not the "big problem" heading.  (One
caution:  this was a fairly brief study.)  The big hassles in translating
Fortran to C that I found were the complex, baroque formatted I/O and the
long list of non-trivial library functions that have to be provided.
-- 
The meek can have the Earth;    |    Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
the rest of us have other plans.|uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu