Re: [vox-tech] Fortran 90/95

[Peter Jay Salzman <pMAPS@dirac.org>]

On Thu 05 Apr 01,  4:01 PM, Gabriel Rosa said: 
> 
> Hey all,
> 
> is there a free Fortran 90/95 compiler for Unix?
> 
> thanks
> -Gabe

not technically.  there are free (GNU) programs that convert 90/95 into 77,
and then you can use g77 to compile the 77 code.

there is a project to write a free g95 compiler.  just went to sourceforge
(which is hosting the project).   the last CVS commit was 6 hours ago, so the
project is definitely not stagnant.   progress is being made.

i heard someone was collecting donations to help fund the programmers, but i
can't find mention of it.  instead, the project manager seems to want chocolate
or beer.

homepage: http://g95.sourceforge.net/

they estimate that 200,000 lines of code will be needed to implement g95.  they
are currently at 28,000.  it currently does nothing practical.  the project is
listed as "pre-alpha".

check out: http://g95.sourceforge.net/.  it's being written in C.

this is one of the weak links in open source, IMHO.  fortran is MUCH better
suited for numeric calculations.  it's much more forgiving than C and allows
non-programming savy scientists program without having to worry about things
like promotions, off-by-one errors, prototypes and the like.  you can do
really neat stuff with fortran 90.  like if you have an array of 10 elements,
then something like

newarray = cosine(oldarray)

does exactly what you think it ought to do.  parts of fortran 95 almost remind
me of perl.  but a much prettier perl.

although with C99, C has come a LONG way to accommodate non-programming savy
scientists.   if i knew about C99 a year ago, i would've written my quantum
simulators in vanilla C. 

pete


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