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Date: 10 Aug 93 02:01:27 GMT
From: cis.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!darwin.sura.net!seas.gwu.edu!mfeld
man@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU  (Michael Feldman)
Subject: Re: QUERY ABOUT MONITOR
Message-ID: <1993Aug10.020127.13792@seas.gwu.edu>
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <244m3h$9k@schonberg.cs.nyu.edu> dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wri
tes:
>I couldn't tell whether Mike's post was intended to be facetious or not.
>I will assume that it was serious. If not, sorry!
>
>Really! if the only reason you can't reuse Fortran code is array mapping,
>have you ever considered the amazing technique of reversing the order of
>the subscripts in the declaration on the Ada side? That is ALL we are
>talking about. Let's not make mountains out of mole hills here. The feature
>is useful, but not essential, it's just a minor convenience to have the
>compiler do this flipping of subscripts automaticaly.
>
My post was from at least a week ago; I'm sure most folks long since forgot
what it was about. 

On the issue: are we sure that Ada maps arrays in such a way that ONLY
flipping the subscripts will guarantee intelligibility to Fortran?

- Nothing in the LRM, for example, requires that arrays be passed by
  reference, but Fortran does. 

- Nothing requires that they even be contiguous. Fortranners usually 
  assume that arrays are contiguous.

- Nothing requires that, even if an array is passed by value, just
  the data is passed with no "dope vector" or whatever.

Where is the binding to IMSL? If it were as easy as you suggest, 
producing one should have been a piece of cake. I claim it's not
trivial for the user (without a lot of 'ADDRESS-ing), and I claim 
the compiler writers could do it pretty easily. Indeed, the 9x annex
even shows what it might look like. That's nice, but where have we
been for 10 years? Nothing in that (Fortran) annex can't be done 
with Ada83, yet nobody has done it (as far as I know). 

Do you really believe that a clean, no-tricks Fortran interface wouldn't 
get Ada into more egineering shops?

Once again, if the univs. had some sources to start with, they might have
shown the way. Then the vendors could just glom on.

Mike