mwm@a.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Mark Maimone) (04/06/90)
Archive-name: f2c/04-Apr-90 Original-posting-by: mwm@a.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Mark Maimone) Original-subject: Re: \Fortran to C translator Archive-site: research.att.com [192.20.225.2] Archive-directory: dist/f2c Archive-files: index Reposted-by: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) Here's an update of the post I made a couple months ago, now with anonymous-FTP info. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Source for f2c, a Fortran 77 to C translator jointly developed by folks from Bell Labs, Bellcore, and Carnegie Mellon, is now freely available. F2c was derived from the original UNIX operating system's f77(1), and the generated C follows f77's calling conventions; on some machines, the resulting object files are interchangeable with (and behave indistinguishably from) objects compiled by f77. The main "advantage" of f2c is that it converts ANSI standard Fortran 77 into C without manual intervention, at least when invoked by a suitable script or makefile (that may need to exercise an f2c option to ensure that COMMON blocks are defined just once). The main "problems" are that f2c does no code restructuring (e.g., gotos are preserved) and that Fortran I/O gets converted into a bunch of calls; thus the translated C code doesn't look too pretty, and in general one would need to maintain the Fortran rather than its translation into C. [F2c is not meant to displace the services of commercial vendors whose business is to convert Fortran into maintainable C.] There is a plethora of options, many of which exist to support different compilation environments for the translated C (e.g., ANSI C or C++ compatability, different type sizes, separate files for COMMON blocks to appease "smart" linkers). So far f2c (and f2c-generated source) has compiled successfully on many machines: Sun, Vax, IBMRT, Apollo, SGI, MIPS, and Cray to name a few. F2c has been under test by the net community for over six months, and has been verified on the NBS tests, several large math libraries, floating point tests, even code for laying cable on the ocean floor! To find out about f2c, send the following E-mail message to netlib (netlib@research.att.com or research!netlib): send index from f2c Your message will be answered automatically (by a program -- see CACM vol. 30 #5 (May, 1987), pp. 403-407). You will receive a reply explaining how to automatically acquire f2c source (about 600K), f2c library source (130K), and supporting info (man page, etc). Or you can anonymous-FTP to research.att.com and look in directory dist/f2c at these files: all.Z -- 250K compressed shar file for f2c index -- general info about files libf77.Z, libi77.Z -- compressed shar files for libraries ****************************** DISCLAIMER ****************************** Careful! Anything free comes with no guarantee. ************************************************************************ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Maimone phone: (412) 268 - 7698 Carnegie Mellon Computer Science email: mwm@cs.cmu.edu cmcspt!mwm@cs.cmu.edu /* barf [ba:rf] 2. "He suggested using FORTRAN, and everybody barfed." - From The Shogakukan DICTIONARY OF NEW ENGLISH (Second edition) */ -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Maimone phone: (412) 268 - 7698 Carnegie Mellon Computer Science email: mwm@cs.cmu.edu grad student, vocal jazz and PDQ Bach enthusiast