Re: Who uses clapack?

From: Jentje Goslinga (goslinga_at_telus.net)
Date: 12/11/04 

Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 05:20:15 GMT

James Giles wrote:
> Jentje Goslinga wrote:
>
>>Rich Townsend wrote:
>>
>>>Jentje Goslinga wrote:
>>
> ...
>
>>>>The beauty of C++ is that the notion that the code will have
>>>>to connect to modules written in other languages has been an
>>>>intrinsic part of the design of the language from the beginning.
>>>
>>>
>>>I can't find the section in Bjarne Stroustrup's book where he discusses
>>>interoperability with other languages. Would you care to enlighten me?
>>
>>Yes, the "extern C" syntax is discused in Chapter 9
>>Section 9.2.4 Linkage to Non-C++ code,
>>The C++ programming Language, third edition page 205.
>
>
>
> That's interop with C (which is almost redundant, C++ originally
> being an extension of C, it's hardly impressive that it can interop
> with C).

It is not so trivial with overloading and name decoration.

> I still don't see the part where it's originally intended
> to interop with, say, Ada, Pascal, Lisp, Haskell, and yes: Fortran.

You are right, that part doesnt exist; I had forgotten that
but what's the difference, isn't C almost the same as Fortran?

Interoperability between languages is a gray area where one
needs to consider the following:
   1 Ability to suppress C++ name decoration, knowledge of other
     conventions such as underscores appended or prepended to name
   2 Knowledge of linker conventions such as upper case conversion
     and maximum name length
   3 Ability for the programmer to specify parameter passing by
     address and by value which C and C++ have
   4 Ability for the user to use parameter passing from left to
     right or vice versa
   5 Conventions on stack based parameter passing notably padding
     and stack alignment
   6 Decide on who resets the stack pointer, caller or callee.

I agree there may be differences between languages between
items 4-6 although they are usually not irreconcilable since
the operating systems supporting these languages must use
cross language linking too.
I believe none of these are even specified by the C or C++
standards either, although parameter passing from the right
to left is said to be necessary to accommodate variable
number of parameters.

But you are right.

Jentje

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