[comp.lang.fortran] Re^2: Wanted: RATFOR, EFL or other FORTRAN preprocessor

mark@intek01.UUCP (Mark McWiggins) (09/21/89)

mac@harris.cis.ksu.edu (Myron A. Calhoun) writes:

>But I don't know why you'd want a preprocessor for FORTRAN 77.
>SPARKS was written back in the days when FORTRAN 66 didn't have
>any block structure; now that FORTRAN 77 does, preprocessors
>seem kind of unnecessary.
>--Myron

It's been a few years since I was a Fortranner, but in my experience
Fortran suffered from the "Tower of Babel Effect": multiple incompatible
extensions, even in F77.  The ratfor compiler I used generated a 
lowest-common-denominator F66 that would be painful to write, but which 
is easy to port.  Also it handled the C-like preprocessor things like
#define that standard F77 (at the time, at least) didn't.
-- 
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