Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!haven!mimsy!aplcen!jhunix!ins_aejs
From: ins_aejs@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Edward Sullivan)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran vs C for computations
Summary: cpp *isd* useful with f77 programs
Message-ID: <7029@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
Date: 19 Sep 88 17:47:02 GMT
References: <1226@scolex> <3448@lanl.gov> <391@quintus.UUCP>
Organization: Johns Hopkins Univ. Computing Ctr.
Lines: 20

In article <3448@lanl.gov> jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:
 >Preprocessing is a textual substitution problem.
 >...cpp can usually be applied to any text file you have -
 >including Fortran code.
then, in reply:
In article <391@quintus.UUCP>, ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: 
> (1) cpp need not exist on every system.
>...
> (2) cpp may be applied to any text file.  True.
>     cpp may be USEFULLY applied to Fortran code.  FALSE.
 to say that cpp need not exist on every system does not address
the point that cpp can be applied as a preprocessor for Fortran
programs.

 To say that cpp cannot be usefully applied to Fortran programs
is simply incorrect. I've done it myself. No quibbling about
whether you can call a program that uses #include a Fortran
program. I say its a Fortran program, f77 says its a Fortran program,
and using #includes for common blocks and parameter statements
helped eliminate those nasty errors resulting from defining the same
common block differently in different routines. So there.