Re: Fortran Namelist Package

["Howard W. LUDWIG" <howard.w.ludwig@lmco.com>]

"Anthony E. Glover" wrote:

> Does anyone know of an Ada package for interfacing to Fortran namelist
> files.
> I need something that can read the files and provide an interface for
> retrieving
> the values.
>
> Tony

Was NAMELIST standardized in Fortran 90?  I'm not aware that it was.
I know that many compilers provided NAMELIST as extensions to
FORTRAN 66 and FORTRAN 77; however, as extensions and not part of
the standard, the implementations among vendors varied quite a bit.
(I believe DOD had NAMELIST in some MIL-STD defining Fortran for
DOD purposes, but it did not match any ISO/IEC/ANSI standard--in fact,
I suspect that DODs failure to get NAMELIST and ENCODE/DECODE approved
as part of FORTRAN 77 was part of the driving force for DOD having a
language they could exercise more control over--and they ended up
with Ada--not too shabby.)

In other words, you need to be careful about using such NAMELISTs in
Fortran because of the variety of syntax used by vendors.  Even if you
do find existing Ada code (and I am not aware of any--have you checked
the PAL?), it may not do what you need because it supports the "wrong"
syntax.

Howard W. LUDWIG