Xref: utzoo comp.lang.fortran:728 comp.lang.c:10652 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!pilchuck!ssc!happym!polari!microsoft!bobal From: bobal@microsoft.UUCP (Bob Allison) Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.c Subject: Re: Should I convert FORTRAN code to C? Keywords: language conversions, FORTRAN, c Message-ID: <1517@microsoft.UUCP> Date: 10 Jun 88 15:19:38 GMT References: <2742@utastro.UUCP> Reply-To: bobal@microsoft or {uunet,sun}!microsoft!bobal (Bob Allison) Organization: Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA Lines: 39 In article <2742@utastro.UUCP> rlr@utastro.UUCP (Randy Ricklefs) writes: >1) Are people actually initiating new projects in FORTRAN, or are they > maintaining and porting old FORTRAN code? >2) Does the answer to 1) change if we restrict discussion to PC's & Macs? I'd say that on PCs most of the stuff going on is porting. But that is because there is a lot of stuff on mainframes which people want to run on PCs and are finally getting the horsepower to do. I was actually surprised by how much new development is going on. >3) Is c a suitable replacement for FORTRAN in terms of mathematical capabil- > ities and portablility? Plenty of other postings arguing this issue. I will just toss in my opinion that you'll almost always get better execution time on a FORTRAN program than a comparable C program (see my next posting). >4) Are there reliable FORTRAN to c translators available under MS-DOS or UNIX > that will allow moving over to c without re-coding the world? > I've seen some ads in typical PC magazines. Buy a few and take a look. But be skeptical: call them up, ask them hard questions. Most of them will require at least some user intervention. Almost all of them generate crummy source, which you practically have to rewrite before you can do any serious maintenance. Be prepared to do some debugging. All of this boils down to: how much are you willing to invest to move to a "modern" language? Is execution speed important? What are the real reasons for switching? Are you going to have to maintain this later? Try to figure out the economics of the effort, then decide. How much time/effort/money are you going to save down the road by investing a bunch of it now? It might be better to spend the time doing something else. >Thanks in advance for the help! > We're always willing to offer opinions when it isn't our project :-)