Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!hc!lanl!jlg
From: jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran versus C for numerical anal
Message-ID: <4031@lanl.gov>
Date: 22 Sep 88 18:52:14 GMT
References: <1483@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu>
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 24

From article <1483@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu>, by davis@galaxy.ee.rochester.edu (Al Davis):
> Well, then it is not portable.

It's portable enough.  It has never failed to be implemented on a
machine to which the port has been attempted.  If IBM, Cray, CDC, DEC,
SUN, Apollo, etc.... aren't portable enough for you, well just forget it.

Also, you comment that malloc is a standard part of the C library is
nonsense.  C has _no_ standard library yet.  Besides, _sombody_ has to
port the library to each machine.  If dynamic memory _can_ be ported to 
a machine, then it can be made Fortran callable.  If it can't, C can't
ported either.  Both languages are equivalent to universal Turing 
machines (without the infinite tape).

Here's a challange for you.  Port all the C utilities in UNIX system V
to some machine which is not-at-all similar to a VAX.  I know people
who have just done this.  Their Fortran code ported without a hitch, the
C code had all sorts of problems.  Fortran programmers seldom make
assumptions about wordsize, addressability, etc..  C programmers nearly
always make such assumptions.  (I hear that YACC has a reference to 
x[-1] in it somewhere - illegal, but oft used.)

J. Giles
Los Alamos