Re: Fortran/Ada

[jb@rti-sel.UUCP (Jeff Bartlett)]

Some of the gotcha's I found in Xlating 'tran --> Ada were:
1.	a subroutine that wrote N elements of an array to an unformatted file.

	Of course, the array, N, and the logical unit number were parameters.

	And the actual parameters were arrays of almost anything, including
	the first elements of common blocks (yes, they wrote the whole block).
	(BTW, there was a matching read subroutine).

2.	Passing a slice of a multi-dim array to subroutines.
		(row-major vs column major).

3.	Run-time generated format lists. (nasty, but legal)

4.	Jumping out of case statements with GOTOs.  Can't with Ada.

5.	Equivalaces.  (arrays mapped into matrices, RM vs CM again).

6.	Of course, there is no compiler checks for parameter type or number.

7.	Statement operator precedence.

I think mechanical translation is difficult, but do-able.  It would
require the global 'view' of things.

Jeff Bartlett
Center for Digital Systems Research
Research Triangle Institute              rti-sel!jb@mcnc