19 Mar
2018
19 Mar
'18
8:50 p.m.
On Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 5:07 PM, Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
[...]
I do remember, one of the big issues with UNIX being picked up into the EE
department was the lack of a 'proper Fortran.' As much as modern
languages like C and Pascal were clearly the direction, a lot of professors
had a lot of code in FORTRAN they wanted to run.
So now I live in a world were the best FORTRAN compilers are UNIX based
and I don't write with FORTRAN anymore. I still have a ton of respect for
those that do and even more for the wizards like Paul and co that have
spent their careers creating compilers for FORTRAN that have spanned such
changes in the underlying system hardware, as well as the language itself
and keep those same user codes getting correct answers and using the
hardware as well as can be.
And to bring this back around to Unix, here are a couple of random
questions....
First, in Dennis Ritchie's paper, "The Development of the C Language" (
https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html) he mentions the early
days of Unix, Ken taking Doug McIlroy's implementation of "TMG" on the
PDP-7 as a challenge and deciding to produce a "systems programming
language." The first effort was, apparently, "a rapidly scuttled attempt at
Fortran", followed by B.
I'm curious at the FORTRAN effort: what was that about, where did it come
from, and why was it abandoned?
Second, 7th Edition came with the "f77" command implementing
(unsurprisingly) Fortran 77. A paper by Stu Feldman and Peter Weinberger in
Volume 2 describes the compiler and includes this line: "This is believed
to be the first complete Fortran 77 system to be implemented." (
https://s3.amazonaws.com/plan9-bell-labs/7thEdMan/vol2/f77.txt)
Was that true? Notable in this paper is mention that the Fortran compiler
can drive the backend of either Ritchie's PDP-11 C compiler *or* Johnson's
portable C compiler. What was the local story? Did this see local use?
- Dan C.