Clem,

I agree with everything you said.

I think the operative word here is "playing". I'm not aware of anyone who would use either 4.3BSD or efl for real work. It's just fun to mess around with some things from the somewhat distant past that we missed along the way.

For me, right now, that's BSD, which I used at Naval Postgraduate School in the mid-80s, but never after. After I left grad school, all I was exposed to was SVR2-4 and then OSF/1 and then Solaris from the mid 90's on. BSD is fun.

Tom

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Tom Manos

Vivat Jesus

KO4ENQ

On Thu, Dec 16, 2021 at 12:56 PM Tom Manos <tom.manos@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm late to the party here. Although I'm a gray hair, I didn't start using UNIX until the early '80s, and though I've seen, and been curious about efl, I've never used it. Fortran 4 was my first high-level language in college in the '70s.

That said, I do remember efl being on an early PC based UNIX - Microport SVR2. On later Microport UNIXen it was gone, but I can't remember whether it disappeared on SVR3 or 4.

I currently play with 4.3BSD Quasijarus system on simh, which has efl. What a fun system to play with! Maybe I'll give efl a try if I can find enough docs to grok it.

Tom
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Tom Manos
KO4ENQ

On Wed, Dec 15, 2021 at 3:49 AM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
Hi TUHS folks!

After having reincarnated ratfor, I am wondering about Stuart Feldman's
efl (extended fortran language). It was a real compiler that let you
define structs, and generated more or less readable Fortran code.

I have the impression that it was pretty cool, but that it just didn't
catch on. So:

- Did anyone here ever use it personally?

- Is my impression that it didn't catch on correct? Or am I ignorant?

Thoughts etc. welcome. :-)

Thanks,

Arnold