[COFF] Happy birthday, John Backus!

Clem Cole clemc at ccc.com
Thu Dec 5 00:54:08 AEST 2019


Intel ifort <https://software.intel.com/en-us/fortran-compilers> which as
one of my friends like to say "has the DEC Fortran compiler DNA ground up
and reinserted" ;-)

On Wed, Dec 4, 2019 at 12:41 AM Wesley Parish <wobblygong at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've just run that little program through gfortran without switches
> (naming it pyramid.for) and it comes up with:
>
> pyramid.for:25:6:
>
>       ;ENDDO;IMPLICIT(IF)=IF;IMPLICIT(EXTERNAL)=IF;DOFORRETURN=IF,GOTO-EX
>       1
> Error: Bad continuation line at (1)
> pyramid.for:12:9:
>
>       R;DOFORIF=INTEGER,INTEGER;ENDDO;INTEGER=IF+IF;GOTO=INTEGER*INTEGER*
>          1
> Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
> pyramid.for:23:56:
>
>       IF,INTEGER,EXTERNAL,RETURN;DOFOREXTERNAL=IF,GOTO;DOFORRETURN=INTEGE
>                                                         1
> Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
> pyramid.for:25:52:
>
>       ;ENDDO;IMPLICIT(IF)=IF;IMPLICIT(EXTERNAL)=IF;DOFORRETURN=IF,GOTO-EX
>                                                     1
> Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
> pyramid.for:26:43:
>
>       XTERNAL;WRITE(IF,'(''$  '')');ENDDO;DOFORRETURN=IF,EXTERNAL;WRITE(I
>                                            1
> Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
> pyramid.for:27:62:
>
>       IF,'(''$''I4)')IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;WRITE(IF,'( /)');DOFORRETURN=
>                                                               1
> Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
> pyramid.for:23:34:
>
>       IF,INTEGER,EXTERNAL,RETURN;DOFOREXTERNAL=IF,GOTO;DOFORRETURN=INTEGE
>                                   1
> Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
> pyramid.for:15:17:
>
>       LSUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER)
>                  1
> Warning: Rank mismatch in argument ‘implicit’ at (1) (rank-1 and
> scalar) [-Wargument-mismatch]
>
> I think gfortran must have '--strict' on by default. I might try it
> with the OpenWatcom Fortran compiler next - if it'll install on my
> current Linux box.
>
> Just out of interest, what is your current Fortran 2018 compiler?
>
> Wesley Parish
>
> On 12/4/19, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 3, 2019 at 2:56 AM Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
> >
> >> As every computer programmer should know, John Backus was emitted in
> >> 1924;
> >> he
> >> gave us the BNF syntax, but the sod also gave us that FORTRAN
> >> obscenity...
> >>
> > Be careful, Fortran still pays a lot of bills (I like to say that it has
> > paid my salary for nearly 45 years and I don't program in it - I'm an OS
> > guy). But Fortran >>is<< the #1 language for anything scientific and I
> > don't think that is going away in the future or really change its
> position
> > in popularity for a number of reasons (my analog is the QWERTY keyboard -
> > that ship has sailed and it's not economically interesting). There are a
> > number of places to check this out, but try looking at Archer AC Code
> > Status
> > <http://www.archer.ac.uk/status/codes/>, which is an interesting HPC
> usage
> > site in the UK. Note that Fortran is by far the leading programming
> > language used for ‘production’ (there are other sites that offer similar
> > data, I'll leave it to the reader to find them).
> >
> > Trivia: there is no way that FORTRAN can be described in any syntax; it
> is
> >> completely ad-hoc.
> >
> > Again, be careful with such observations.  First off, I'm fairly sure
> that
> > the Intel Compiler teams (ifort
> > <https://software.intel.com/en-us/fortran-compilers>) use a parser
> > generator for parts of the ifort front-end. (Paul W might know more
> details
> > as he once worked in that technology).  As I understand it, the front-end
> > does have a number of special cases in it, so your observation is
> partially
> > true, but the language definition is not 'completely ad-hoc'.
> >
> > The facts are that the language my father learned in the early 1960s
> > (FORTRAN-II) and the language I learned in the late 60's/early 1970s
> > (FORTRAN-IV) are not the same language as today's Fortran-2018, i.e. the
> > language definition has hardly been static. Said in another way, about a
> > year ago, a new standard for Fortran 2018 standard was released – see
> > Fortran
> > 2018 (Formerly Fortran 2015)  <https://wg5-fortran.org/f2018.html> and
> > it actually
> > offers support for ‘modern’ ideas such as object-oriented programming:
> > Object-oriented
> > programming in Fortran Wiki
> > <http://fortranwiki.org/fortran/show/Object-oriented+programming>
> > .
> >
> > FWIW: I tried to explain some of these ideas pictorially in my Quora
> > answer: Clem Cole's answer to Is Fortran obsolete?
> > <https://www.quora.com/Is-Fortran-obsolete/answer/Clem-Cole> This is
> not to
> > denigrate other languages like Julia, Tensorflow etc. But the fact is
> that
> > the hammer has been improved and the *ways the nails are delivered has
> > changed*, but the *fundamental action provided* (fastening for nails and
> > scientific computation in the case of Fortran) has been unchanged because
> > it has proven to be the one of the best, if not the best to do the job it
> > is designed to do.
> >
> > That said, I offer the following code snippet, which my Intel 2018
> > compatible compiler accepts without any switches.  Which is really a
> > remarkable comment about the women and men in the front-end team:
> >
> > C    This FORTRAN program may be compiled and run on a Norsk Data
> > C    computer running SINTRAN and the FTN compiler.  It uses only
> > C    FORTRAN reserved words, and contains just one numerical
> > C    constant, in a character string (a format specifier).  When
> > C    you run it, it prints a well known mathematical construct...
> > C
> > C    Even FORTRAN is a block structured programming language:
> > C
> >       PROGRAM
> >      ;PROGRAM;INTEGERIF,INTEGER,GOTO,IMPLICIT;REALREAL,DIMENSION,EXTERNA
> >      AL,FORMAT,END;INTEGERLOGICAL;REALCOMPLEX,DATA,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER
> >      R;DOFORIF=INTEGER,INTEGER;ENDDO;INTEGER=IF+IF;GOTO=INTEGER*INTEGER*
> >      *INTEGER*INTEGER-INTEGER-IF;CALLFUNCTION(IMPLICIT,REAL,DIMENSION,EX
> >      XTERNAL,FORMAT,END,LOGICAL,COMPLEX,DATA,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);CALL
> >      LSUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER)
> >       END
> >       SUBROUTINEFUNCTIO
> >      ON(IMPLICIT,REAL,DIMENSION,EXTERNAL,FORMAT,END,LOGICAL,COMPLEX,DATA
> >      A,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);RETURN
> >       END
> >       SUBROUTINESUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,L
> >      LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER);INTEGERGOTO,IMPLICIT(GOTO),LOGICAL(GOTO),I
> >      IF,INTEGER,EXTERNAL,RETURN;DOFOREXTERNAL=IF,GOTO;DOFORRETURN=INTEGE
> >      ER,EXTERNAL-IF;IMPLICIT(RETURN)=LOGICAL(RETURN)+LOGICAL(RETURN-IF);
> >      ;ENDDO;IMPLICIT(IF)=IF;IMPLICIT(EXTERNAL)=IF;DOFORRETURN=IF,GOTO-EX
> >      XTERNAL;WRITE(IF,'(''$  '')');ENDDO;DOFORRETURN=IF,EXTERNAL;WRITE(I
> >      IF,'(''$''I4)')IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;WRITE(IF,'( /)');DOFORRETURN=
> >      =IF,GOTO;LOGICAL(RETURN)=IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;ENDDO
> >       END
> > Running the program should yield:
> >                            1
> >                          1   1
> >                        1   2   1
> >                      1   3   3   1
> >                    1   4   6   4   1
> >                  1   5  10  10   5   1
> >                1   6  15  20  15   6   1
> >              1   7  21  35  35  21   7   1
> >            1   8  28  56  70  56  28   8   1
> >          1   9  36  84 126 126  84  36   9   1
> >        1  10  45 120 210 252 210 120  45  10   1
> >      1  11  55 165 330 462 462 330 165  55  11   1
> >    1  12  66 220 495 792 924 792 495 220  66  12   1
> >
>
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