[Discuss] FORTRAN -> ???

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On 01/22/2012 02:14 PM, Jack Coats wrote:
> F2C would be my initial recommendation.
>
> Depends on which dialect of FORTRAN you are converting.
> Cut my teeth on FORTRAN IV, but also had some experience
> with FORTRAN II and FORTRAN 77, but mainly FORTRAN IV
I have been involved in many conversions in my past. Some of these were
COBOL to COBOL. I even had a system that had been written in COBOL by a
FORTRAN programmer which ended up as FORTRAN compiled by a COBOL
compiler. There are a number of issues you really need to take into
account.
First the conversion itself. As mentioned before F2C is reasonable and
you get the output in C, not C++.
Secondly testing to make sure the results are what you want
Third, and probably the most important is maintainability. What you will
get is essentially FORTRAN compiled in C. The first programming language
I learned was FORTRAN II. But, if the resulting code does not look like
C or C++ you still are going to have trouble maintaining the code.
So, my advice might be to start with F2C, but to do a rewrite.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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