Re: Objects in Fortran 2000

[bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)]

In article <5fmemp$bgo@fg70.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>,
Thomas Koenig <Thomas.Koenig@ciw.uni-karlsruhe.de> wrote:
>What's missing in Ada that is present in HPF or Fortran 95?  I
>can think of the following, and hope that others will extend the
>list:

Well, if you add all the missing features, that won't make everybody
rewrite all their Fortran code in Ada.  It might win over some new
projects, I suppose.

>- FORALL (similar to a DO loop in Fortran, or a for loop in
>  Ada, except that the order of execution isn't specified,
>  so that automatic paralellization is very easy)

Such a feature was considered during the Ada 9X project.  It was
rejected due to the general feeling that Ada 9X was too much.  Not due
to dislike for the feature itself.  (I don't remember the details of the
feature -- if anybody is interested, there must be old versions of those
documents around somewhere.)

>- PURE subroutines, which can't have any side effects (checkable by
>  the compiler).  Ideal for sticking into FORALL statements.

Ada 95 has this, although it is not as fine-grained as one might like
(pragma Pure applies to a whole library-unit).

>- Built-in array arithmetic (quite easy to do with a library in Ada)

Yup.

- Bob