From [log in to unmask] Thu Oct 2 17:57:42 1997
Original-Sender: [log in to unmask]
Date: Thu, 02 Oct 1997 09:45:39 +0200
From: Pierre Hugonnet <[log in to unmask]>
Jan van Oosterwijk wrote:
> I know one organisation where people are still using
> Fortran 77, pretending that their existing programs are
> 77, though I tried hard to convince them of the advantages
> of Fortran 90/95.
All Fortran programers still use f77 here (except myself). They have
good and bad reasons:
- good f90 compilers not available on all platforms
- performances degradations from f77 to f90
- people who really need modern features switched to C years ago
- A lot a hidden dynamic memory allocation in f90 (some industrial
packages make their own memory mangement and don't like this)
In my opinion, the only attractive reason to switch to f90 (for both
f77 and C programers) will be the parallel programming features.
One very good reason for f77 progranmners to switch to F90
is to use free-format source program, which comes
with automatic checks on variable names (blanks are
not ignored!). Errors of this nature are easy to
creep thru in F77. Coupled with IMPLICIT NONE
provides a substantial improvement in bug reduction.
(who hasn't gone beyond column 72?)
regards
Pierre Hugonnet, PhD Student (Geophysics) |phone: 33- 5 59 83 57 94
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