Fortran vs. C for numerical work

[John Prentice]

In article <1990Nov22.051446.1871 at ccu.umanitoba.ca> salomon at ccu.umanitoba.ca (Dan Salomon) writes:
>
>The reasons that C should replace FORTRAN for numerical work:
>
> 1) C allows recursive functions, whereas portable FORTRAN doesn't.
>    Recursive functions can often solve a problem more clearly
>    than iterative methods, even if they are usually less efficient.
>
> 2) FORTRAN has no dynamic array allocation.  Although C has dynamically
>    allocated arrays, they are not trivial to describe or allocate.
>-- 
>
It should be mentioned however, that the proposed Fortran 90 standard
does have allocatable arrays and most current generation Fortran compilers
already either allow for this or can be trivially linked to C to do it.
There are also recursive Fortran compilers available now and (if I remember
right) this is a feature of Fortran 90, should we live so long as to
actually see the standard adopted.

John Prentice
Amparo Corporation