Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!ukma!rutgers!bellcore!tness7!tness1!sugar!ficc!peter
From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran versus C for numerical anal
Message-ID: <1612@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 26 Sep 88 13:33:53 GMT
References: <1584@ficc.uu.net> <4151@lanl.gov>
Organization: SCADA
Lines: 25

In article <4151@lanl.gov>, jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:
> 1) It rasies the spectre of aliasing in contexts where it doesn't exist
>    if the pointer isn't user accessible.  For this reason, things that
>    would otherwise vectorize or unroll for pipelining must be done by
>    the compiler as if the possible aliasing has actually occurred.

You use Fortran and you complain about aliasing? What about common blocks,
call-by-reference to constants, equivalence, and all the other horrible
places that Fortran can bite you on aliasing. Even *without* worrying
about optimisation.

> 2) It clutters up it's scope with the name of something I don't need
>    explicit access to.  This increases the possibility of another
>    variable, whose name is misspelled, going undetected.

You use Fortran and you complain about misspellings going undetected? This
language has more of a problem with typos than any other just because of
implicit typing of variables. I think that this 'feature' of Fortran by itself,
counts far more against it than *anything* you can call up against C.

I said before I wasn't going to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man. I'm
afraid I lied.
-- 
Peter da Silva  `-_-'  Ferranti International Controls Corporation.
"Have you hugged  U  your wolf today?"            peter@ficc.uu.net