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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!chpf127
From: chpf127@ut-emx.UUCP (John W. Eaton)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Calling FORTRAN from C (Was: Need matrix inversion C routine).
Summary: Yes, but he said high quality numerical routines...
Message-ID: <12656@ut-emx.UUCP>
Date: 2 May 89 18:01:26 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
Lines: 36

feg@clyde.ATT.COM (Forrest Gehrke) writes:
> charlie@mica.stat.washington.edu (Charlie Geyer) writes:
>> 
>> ...  It's very annoying, especially these days when all of the really
>> high quality numerical stuff is still in FORTRAN and all of the good user
>> interface stuff is in C.
> 
> If portability and compatibility with ANSI C are foremost, then 
> you probably would be best off with "Numerical Recipes in C"

As has aleady been mentioned here, the Numerical Recipes in C code is
*not* portable [a bit of a problem with pointer arithmetic.  See
<13239@mimsy.UUCP> (26 Aug 88)]. 

> (assuming you aren't interested in re-inventing).

Well, re-inventing isn't even the real issue in many cases.  It's that
the algorithms given in Numerical Recipes (as the authors even admit)
are really just starting points and examples, not to be confused with
high quality numerical software (whatever *that* means :-).  Heck, the
Fortran (correct spelling? :-) routines don't even use dummy work work
vectors, but allocate some arbitrary amount of fixed storage for
scratch space.

Will there ever be a set of numerical routines in C which is as
complete, standard, available, well tested, inexpensive, etc.
as those currently available in Fortran?

> [ A plug for the Numerical Recipes in C diskettes deleted ...]
>    
> --Forrest Gehrke
-- 
John Eaton
chpf127@emx.cc.utexas.edu
Department of Chemical Engineering
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas  78712