[Info-vax] The (now lost) future of Alpha.

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2018-08-01 15:34, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 07/31/2018 09:17 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 7/31/2018 4:47 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>> On 2018-07-31 01:44, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>> On 7/30/2018 1:39 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>>>> Isn't RATFOR a kind of compiler that reads RAT and emits
>>>>> an intermediate language resembling Fortran?  :-)
>>>>
>>>> I assume it is joke.
>>>>
>>>> RAT stands for RATional.
>>>>
>>>> And it outputs valid Fortran.
>>>
>>> I don't see why you would think it's a joke.
>>
>> I assume it was a joke about "rat" also being a generaly
>> despised animal.
>>
>>>                                            It's a very appropriate 
>>> description of the RATFOR compiler. It takes a language as input, and 
>>> outputs another as output, just like any compiler.
>>
>> Yes.
>>
>> But I don't think the input is RAT.
>>
>>>                                               And it's a compiler 
>>> written in FORTRAN. Which was the point. You can write a compiler in 
>>> FORTRAN, and RATFOR is an example of such a compiler.
>>
>> Yes. Indeed.
>>
>>> The fact that the intermediate language is FORTRAN is hardly making a 
>>> difference.
>>
>> I think the fact that it is Fortran and not something resembling Fortran
>> is sort of relevant.
>>
> 
> OK, OK, it was a joke...
> 
> RATFOR -- input RAT output FOR.
> 
> And I didn't even think of vermin when I wrote that.  I have done RATFOR
> and think it was a very elegant solution to a common problem.

So maybe it was just be who didn't read that so much as a joke.
The input language is sortof only called RATFOR. I have never seen any 
other name anyway. But using "RAT" as a short name for that looked 
perfectly reasonable to me.
And the output is FORTRAN, so no surprise there.

And the default file extensions (at least for RATFOR on PDP-11s) are 
.RAT and .FOR (or .FTN, depending on which version), so input RAT and 
output FOR looked very reasonable to me.

And no, I didn't make the association to vermin either.

   Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol