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From: fpst@hubcap.UUCP (Steve Stevenson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: F8X comments
Message-ID: <778@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-Dec-87 09:04:45 EST
Article-I.D.: hubcap.778
Posted: Thu Dec  3 09:04:45 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 7-Dec-87 02:14:06 EST
References: <9581@mimsy.UUCP>
Organization: Clemson University, Clemson, SC
Lines: 22
Summary: Portability

in article <9581@mimsy.UUCP>, chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) says:
> 
>>In article <402@auvax.UUCP> rwa@auvax.UUCP (Ross Alexander) writes:
>> ....[portability]
> (Hah!  Most useful FORTRAN programs or subroutines require *some*
> change or adjustment to be brought from one environment to another:
> all those machine-specific constants in the engineering libraries
> are a good example.

There's a lot more to this than programmer introduced things.  The
changes in arithmetic can be killers.  For example code that has
no built in anything running on, say a VAX, may not fly on an IBM
due to the drastic differences in floating point arithmetic.

To be truly portable, then the concept of a standard language would
have to be much more extensive than it is.

-- 
Steve Stevenson                            fpst@hubcap.clemson.edu
(aka D. E. Stevenson),                     fpst@clemson.csnet
Department of Computer Science,            comp.hypercube
Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-1906 (803)656-5880.mabell