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From: bevan@cs.man.ac.uk (Stephen J Bevan)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Interfaces.Ada
Followup-To: comp.lang.misc
Date: 02 Nov 1994 16:14:15 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science; University of Manchester
Message-ID: <BEVAN.94Nov2161415@panther.cs.man.ac.uk>
References: <39602v$3rl@felix.seas.gwu.edu> <396agd$9bt@network.ucsd.edu>
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In-reply-to: mbk@inls1.ucsd.edu's message of 1 Nov 1994 21:04:13 GMT
Date: 1994-11-02T16:14:15+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

[ Since the following isn't Ada specific, I've redirected followups to
  comp.lang.misc - bevan ]

In article <396agd$9bt@network.ucsd.edu> mbk@inls1.ucsd.edu (Matt Kennel) writes:
   ... I've always wondered about one thing:

     When people make new langauges why do they implement the C storage
     layout for multi-dimensional arrays instead of that of Fortran?  E.g.
     as it seems, Ada9x, Modula-3. ...

Perhaps because the people who make new languages with Fortran
incompatible arrays don't necessarily care about Fortran
compatibility?


     Why not make the default just like Fortran?  I don't think one way is
     particularly more "natural" than the other so now that Fortran chose one
     convention why not stay with it?

Perhaps because some do find the row major order more natural.  The
following is taken from the section 2.2.6 "Arrays and Orthogonal Lists"
in Knuth's Fundamental Algorithms pp 296 :-

  The most natural (and most commonly used) way to allocate storage is
  to let the array appear in memory in the ``lexiographic order'' of
  its indices, sometimes called ``row major order''.