Re: [Chasm-interop-devel] followup from cca meeting

[Craig R. <cra...@la...>]

On Oct 19, 2007, at 11:51 AM, Tom Epperly wrote:

> A new F2003 binding will start using F2003 capabilities. When will  
> retire the F77 and F90 bindings when people stop using those  
> languages.

Unlike C and C++, there is one language Fortran and as far as I know,  
all of the major vendors have only one compiler.  What people mean  
when they say F77 is implicit interfaces with fixed format input.   
Usually, F90 is used to imply explicit interfaces with free format  
input.  One can choose to program in any of these styles (including  
mixing implicit and explicit interfaces with either fixed or free  
form) using any modern compiler.

As I understood from Matt, the discussion was whether the Chasm hacks  
(which seem to work well) could be dropped in favor language  
standards supported by the compiler vendors.  I'm not certain, but  
I'm pretty sure that the C interoperability standard with work quite  
well for Babel users.  I believe the following is correct:

1. Support for implicit interfaces (i.e., F77 bindings) would remain  
the same.  This should work with any compiler and compiler version.

2. Support for explicit interfaces (i.e,. F90 bindings) "could" be  
switched to C interop with no impact on users, thus retiring Chasm.

The primary reason I joined the Fortran standards committee was to  
get Chasm capabilities into the language.  I've nearly succeeded but  
time will tell.

Cheers,
Craig