Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!mailrus!sharkey!bnlux0!bam From: bam@bnlux0.bnl.gov (Bruce Martin) Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran Subject: Re: Scope of intrinsics Summary: Fortran validation. (Historical info.) Message-ID: <1397@bnlux0.bnl.gov> Date: 15 Aug 89 19:54:07 GMT References: <1989Aug8.232014.9265@agate.berkeley.edu> <603@mbph.UUCP> Organization: Brookhaven National Lab Lines: 27 At end of item, poster suggests a "validation suite" for Fortran compilers. Aside from saying "Gee, that would be nice", I offer the following historical information. Actually, there is a "Fortran Automated Verification System (FAVS)", which is described in RADC (Rome Air Development Center) publication RADC-TR-78-268 (three small volumes, of which I could only find two, right now). I can't vouch for it, but it did receive much use in the early days of Fortran-77. Presumably, it is still available and useful, but DoD seems to have lost interest in performing validations for any languages whose names have four or more letters (or fewer than 2). The original Fortran Validation Suite was done by F. E. (Betty) Holberton of the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST). It consisted of an extensive set of programs to be run to determine if a processor conformed to X3.9-1966 (Fortran-66). Another related product was "PFORT", developed by Bell Labs (by Stu Feldman, I think) to determine whether a *program* conformed to the X3.9-1966 standard. Anyhow, a Fortran-88 validation suite would be nice, too, but I don't know who would write it, nor who would "certify" validations. Bruce A. Martin Grumman Aircraft Systems Mailstop B02-106 Bethpage, NY 11714 (516) 577-1426