Subject: C/Fortran Compatibility

From: [email-masked] (Harry Berryman)
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 13:16:04 -0500

Ok, folks,

What exactly do you mean by "interlanguage compatibility"?
In particular are we going to ask that F77 programs be able to call 
C routines? Although I agree that this is a good idea, I don't think
that dictating compiler (and linker) standards is in the jurisdiction 
of this committee. 

On a slightly different issue, it is not clear to me that a C++
interface would be different from an ANSI C interface. Although 
it is possible to make an object-oriented interface definition, 
I think that such a definition would be unwise for several reasons.
First, if an ANSI C interface is available, anyone wanting an 
object oriented C++ interface could write one in a portable way.
Second, I don't think that enough object-oriented message-passing 
interfaces have been written to determine what a standard should look like. 
Of course, I'm willing to persuaded on either point.

-scott berryman 
Chairanimal, Language Binding

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From: Tony Skjellum <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 93 12:58:50 CST

I agree with Scott.

I think that a valid, related point, is that there need to be a C interface
which is convenient for C programmers, not just a FORTRAN interface, which
is usable by C programmers, but not natural.

- Tony

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