[TUHS] Ratfor revived!

Arnold Robbins arnold at skeeve.com
Thu Dec 2 06:23:38 AEST 2021


Hi All.

Mainly for fun (sic), I decided to revive the Ratfor (Rational
Fortran) preprocessor.  Please see:

	https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/ratfor

I started with the V6 code, then added the V7, V8 and V10 versions
on top of it. Each one has its own branch so that you can look
at the original code, if you wish. The man page and the paper from
the V7 manual are also included.

Starting with the Tenth Edition version, I set about to modernize
the code and get it to compile and run on a modern-day system.
(ANSI style declarations and function headers, modern include files,
use of getopt, and most importantly, correct use of Yacc yyval and
yylval variables.)

You will need Berkely Yacc installed as byacc in order to build it.

I have only touch-tested it, but so far it seems OK.  'make' runs in like 2
seconds, really quick. On my Ubuntu Linux systems, it compiles with
no warnings.

I hope to eventually add a test suite also, if I can steal some time.

Before anyone asks, no, I don't think anybody today has any real use
for it.  This was simply "for fun", and because Ratfor has a soft
spot in my heart.  "Software Tools" was, for me, the most influential
programming book that I ever read.  I don't think there's a better
book to convey the "zen" of Unix.

Thanks,

Arnold


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