Amen to that. My own application is a whole chemical process simulator, with well over 300 subprpograms. It wasn't until about two years ago that I had to make direct use of any Windows API calls, and then the interfaces were provided by the compiler vendor (in my case Lahey LF95), so that the calls were in Fortran. Most compiler vendors provide provide this, of course. But my point is that prior to using the interface the program had been functioning for years. True, it wasn't until recently that things such as date and time got into the standard, but for a couple of decades the actual implementations have provided the equivalent services. Defacto standards tend to become official over time.
Dick Russell
-----Original Message-----
From: Toon Moene [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2004 4:07 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [Fwd: (j3.2004-464) Comment on PETITION TO RETIRE FORTRAN]
Peter Shenkin wrote:
> I've never seen a large Fortran program that doesn't require
> some services that the language doesn't provide but that
> are provided by OS calls instead. Bindings are usually provided
> in C. Thus, must Fortran programs must call C, and the way
> this is done of course differs from platform to platform.
Those of us who used a real operating system (VMS), instead of an
overgrown games platform like Unix, know that this is a limitation of
Unix, not something intrinsic in operating system interfaces.
--
Toon Moene
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