Re: Help from fellow Fortran Users

From: glen herrmannsfeldt (gah_at_ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: 01/27/04 

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 19:48:33 GMT

Richard Maine wrote:
(snip regarding portability and high/low level languages)

> So are some others. My viewpoint is more that C is the "peculiar"
> one here, though in a way that can be useful. I find C peculiar
> in that it isn't a very high-level language, but more of a
> semiportable assembler. But then, that's just as broad a generalization
> as the ones you have made. Neither yours or mine are really
> accurate.

Well, C more closely matches some low level machine characteristics.
I would much rather write bitmap graphics programs in C, for example.
Operating systems, compilers, device drivers, interrupt routines,
data compression programs, I believe are all easier to write in C.

I do know of one Fortran compiler (mostly) written in Fortran, but
that was written before C existed.

>>For whatever historical reasons, C is the portable language today,
>>and Fortran just ain't.

For number crunching, Fortran is probably about as portable, though
maybe a little more, than C.

Note, though, that some of the reason C is more portable is because
it has machine dependent construct, such as preprocessor macros
and typedef types that vary depending on the machine. Well understood
systems for writing code that varies such characteristics between
machines, and programs actually keeping track of the sizeof() various
data structures.

Numerical programs may be dependent on the precision of the floating
point implementation, but normally not much else.

-- glen

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