On 06/16/2010 05:25 PM, Craig Dedo wrote:
> Since this information is changing very rapidly, it may be helpful to put an "as
> of:" date at the top of the article. I.e., what is the latest date that the information
> is known to be good? Also, what are the version numbers of the compilers that are listed?
> Some compilers, e.g., gfortran, are updated very frequently.
>
> Please consider these suggestions in the version you are publishing in the August
> edition of the Fortran Forum.
>
If I recall correctly, the data was collected around April. I think for
the commercial compilers, the data was relative to what should be the
current version in August (though, I think most tried to be on the save
side by stating the status of the already released version if the
release was not imminent).
For gfortran, the data is always relative to the trunk version
(currently, GCC 4.6) on that date. I think in case of gfortran, it makes
sense to refer to the trunk version as seemingly most users, which are
interested in Fortran 2003/2008, seem to use it. Given the kind of
annual release cycle of GCC with feature freezes around November and
releases in spring, I think the April issues of Fortran Forum roughly
matches the GCC release versions. For this year's August issue, I have
send an update a few days ago, which seemingly has just made it into the
August version.
My impression is that many Fortran 2003 features can now be used - and
also F2008 features are slowly getting implemented. And seemingly,
judging from the gfortran bugreports, as soon as there is new feature
implemented, some users immediately use them for real-world code.
I think the Fortran Forum conformance tables really help to choose as
user the features which one can safely use and (to a lesser degree) aid
compiler developers to decide which features should be implemented next.
Thus: Thanks to Ian and Jane for collecting the data and publishing it
in ACM Fortran Forum!
Tobias
PS: For gfortran, see also http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GFortran#news , the
normal release notes (cf. http://gcc.gnu.org/ ) and the status lists at
http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Fortran2003Status and
http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Fortran2008Status
PPS: I hope that the new Fortran features help to make Fortran more
popular. I started with Fortran 95, but a few years ago I attended a
lecture* where the codes (of the lecturer) were essentially FORTRAN 66.
(No indentation, no filenames but fort.nn etc.) Unfortunately, that
gives a completely wrong impression of Fortran and does not help to
attract students - though most students which encounter Fortran 90+ in
their master or Ph.D. thesis tend to like it. At least, I did and I know
of others.
* = a graduate physics course where some parts where illustrated with
short FORTRAN programs
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