aHumanBeing@earth.planet.universe (02/25/91)
In article <6759@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> burdick@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Bill Burdick) writes:
I don't know whether the Absoft FORTRAN comes with the IMSL library or
not.
In most of the trade journals, IMSL has recently paid for full-page
ads touting the fact that IMSL has been ported to C.
Another well-deserved nail in the well-nailed coffin of FARTRAN..patten@uhunix1.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Brian Michael Patten) (02/28/91)
Here is the promised summary of comments I received concerning f2c on the NeXT. Names are not attached to the comments, and all comments are in summary form. I thank all the people who responded to my information request, it has been very helpful. Comment 1) f2c plus cc is *not* a FORTRAN compiler. You must be careful to check out all the warnings f2c gives you. f2c may be adequate for numerical subroutines. There is no cheaper way to approximate a FORTRAN compiler on the NeXT. Comment 2) Pleased with f2c so far. Has converted and ran existing simulation programs with no problems. Did a test of f2c versus f77 on an HP-9000 and found that the f2c/cc combination produced a program that was 15% smaller and ran 5% faster than its f77 counterpart. However, f77 was able to compile the program in 50 seconds, while f2c/cc took almost 5 minutes! Comment 3) f2c failed to convert a complex (both meanings of word) filter program on a NeXT Cube running OS1.0a because some low level routines (like s_cmp) were not available on the libF77 or libI77 provided with f2c. Comment 4) Compiled entire IEEE FORTRAN library with f2c and had no problems. f2c is a great route and produces very readable C code. Comment 5) f2c works fine on the NeXTstation. It does not like more than 10 continuation lines in a row though. It appears to perform about as well as the Absoft compiler with optimization (however, Absoft's compiler is still optimizing for the 68030/68882 at this time). f2c should work fine unless you are using VAX FORTRAN extensions. Comment 6) f2c works great. Why would anyone buy Absoft's compiler? Correctly installing it on the NeXT is a somewhat non-trivial process though. Those are the comments I received via e-mail. Thanks again. It looks like f2c would be the route for a grad student to take. I will be trying to bring a working version up on a Sun 4/460 to experiment with until I can afford a NeXTstation. Brian *************************************************************************** patten@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu "McIntosh Jr. The Power to Institute for Astronomy Crush the Other Kids" University of Hawaii at Manoa SNL Mock Commercial ***************************************************************************
gt1546c@prism.gatech.EDU (Gatliff, William A.) (03/01/91)
I don't know if I missed a post or what, but where can I get a copy of this f2c program? b.g.