[Info-vax] Text processing examples with Fortran requested

[Ken Fairfield]

On Nov 16, 8:09 am, billg... at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
> In article <UyLTRtE1L... at eisner.encompasserve.org>,
>         koeh... at eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) writes:
>
> > In article <hdq07m$q1n$0... at news.t-online.com>, Michael Kraemer <M.Krae... at gsi.de> writes:
>
> >> F77 can be almost as painful for text stuff because
> >> IIRC the standard does not provide for dynamically allocated
> >> character strings.
>
> >    True, that's in a later standard (99?).  Never stopped us, as
> >    Fortran programmers were were used to the idea that your buffers
> >    always had to be at least as large as the largest data sample.
>
> >    But you only need 95 to start using dynamica allocation.  And
> >    all us VMS programmers started calling STR$ library routines
> >    instead.  The OP didn't sya he needed portability.
>
> Maybe, but he did say he wanted Fortran examples and then he posted
> a program that was anything but Fortran.  Every OS I ever worked with
> had non-Fortran, but callable by Fortran, routines to handle things
> like characters and strings but as soon as oyu add any of this, it
> ceases to be Fortran.
>
> As for the standards beyond Fyortran-77, did nayone ever make
> use of them or the new features they brought to the table?  I
> have seen recent job postings for Fortran positions and they
> all specified Fotran-IV or Fortran-77.

I hate to jump in here (really, I do! :-), but the current
Fortran standard is Fortran 2003, and the most commonly
available compilers are Fortran 95 compliant (that would be
the various versions available on Windows, g95 and gfortran
on linux and Windows, as well as IBM's and Cray's on
their platforms, etc.  The Alpha & Integrity VMS compiler
is also Fortran 95 compliant.

Except for Glen, who loves the history of Fortran (and
various other languages and computer-related things),
I really don't understand why people here are so locked
into discussing a 32-year-old version of a language
which has a widely available 13-year-old(!) version,
is under continuing development, and has a new
version (Fortran 2008) in the midst of the public
comment period.

Are we VMS folks really the old dinosaurs that
others label us as?

BTW, F95 is widely used in the government
weather forecasting "business" in the US
and in Europe, and likely elsewhere.  (Just one
application that pops to mind...there are others
that are similarly compute intensive that are still
mainly Fortran...)

And yes, I have coded in Fortran 95.  Although
sad to say, about the time I started exploring it,
my job position changed, which left me less
and less "interesting" prgramming to do (shucks,
it's mostly DCL these days...soon to be shell
scripting... :-( ).

    -Ken