4.2BSD and F77: Some Questions

[Greg Woods]

   I don't know if this is the right newsgroup for this, but I don't
know where the hell else to put it.
   We have recently brought up a VAX running 4.1aBSD UNIX. Our users
are extremely unhappy with the bug-filled FORTRAN compiler f77(1). Considering
that we just had a long and involved battle over VMS vs. UNIX and UNIX won,
there is a lot of "I told you so" going on, since superior FORTRAN was one
of the major arguments in favor of VMS. I know many UNIX hackers think
FORTRAN is a four-letter word, but in our line of work (scientific research)
we are stuck with it, like it or not. Some of the bugs complained about are:

   1) The implicit statement does not correctly redefine variable types
      (although it seems to work for function calls) when the -I2 flag is
      in use (and maybe other times as well, but I have only documented
      it when using -I2).

   2) There is no BYTE variable, and the compiler will not let you
      equivalence an integer to a CHARACTER*1 for purposes of byte-swapping.

   3) Execution of the "stop" statement sometimes causes a core dump,
      for no apparent reason.

   4) SDB(1) will not print out variables in common blocks, and a new
      "fixed" version I got from someone on the net a while back refuses
      to read core files (it always says: "Bad core magic number").

   5) The documentation is almost nonexistent. For example, nowhere is there
      a list of what intrinsic functions are available, short of perusing
      the sources in /usr/lib/F77. And the functions that are available
      are inconsistent, i.e. there is a "dreal" but no "dimag".

  Now for the real point of this article: Two questions:

  1) We are about to go to 4.2BSD. Is the f77 that comes with that
     version of UNIX any better than the one that comes with 4.1a?

  2) Does anyone know of any other FORTRAN compilers that will run under
     4.2BSD? We might even consider buying one, but of course we would
     prefer something in the public domain.


     Any help would be *greatly* appreciated!

               Greg "I use FORTRAN" Woods
-- 
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