silvert@cs.dal.ca (Bill Silvert) (07/10/90)
There has been a lot of traffic about Fortran preprocessors. Here is a more efficient way of handling at least some such matters than trying to emulate C protocols. Since Fortran is line oriented, you can deactivate a line with a suitable comment sequence, which can be removed by sed(1). For example, the C-like code: #ifdef EXTERNAL CALL XCODE #endif can be replaced by the single line: CX CALL XCODE where CX can be removed by "sed 's/^CX/ /'". I use this extensively for Fortran code which has to be ported to a range of other platforms. There are several advantages to this. - It is shorter. - It is clearer to users who do not use cc or m4. - You only need sed(1) as a preprocessor, and this is available from sources (such as the GNU distribution) which are free. - You can make the changes with any editor if desired. - The unpreprocessed code is valid Fortran and will compile. -- William Silvert, Habitat Ecology Division, Bedford Inst. of Oceanography P. O. Box 1006, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, CANADA B2Y 4A2. Tel. (902)426-1577 UUCP=..!{uunet|watmath}!dalcs!biomel!bill BITNET=bill%biomel%dalcs@dalac InterNet=bill%biomel@cs.dal.ca