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From: Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
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Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2024 14:51:42 -0500
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On 9/2/2024 9:42 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> Michael F. Stemper <michael.stemper@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I would guess that a straight translation of Fortran to C++ could be
>> automated. However, there doesn't seem to be any point in it unless
>> you're going to make use of the object-oriented capabilities of C++.
>> Then, of course, you're looking at a complete refactoring, which would,
>> indeed, be non-trivial.
> 
> Bell Labs wrote an f2c converter back in the eighties and it worked okay.
> For years it was used as a front end to gcc in order to make the g77
> compiler, which worked most of the time for clean fortran 77 code.
> It was not wonderful and it was not optimal but it was functional.
> 
> The nice thing about fortran is that there's a lot less to go wrong than
> with C++.  Engineers should not be allowed to touch pointers.  Nobody should
> ever use null-terminated strings; that was just a bad idea initially.  You
> can still goober things up by writing past array bounds and passing
> subroutine and function parameters improperly but at least we have some
> tools to find these quickly and easily.
> 
> f90 has a lot of very cool matrix functions and operators which make
> compilation on a vector machine (like a GPU) easier, and make for much
> more readable matrix code too.  I have trouble convincing people to use these
> however.
> --scott

I have converted F2C into my own F2CPP with quite a few changes for code 
readability and semi automated usage of std::string.  The fortran reads 
and writes are a complete disaster so I am rewriting these by hand.  I 
have converted almost 100K lines of F77 to C++ so far, all working. 
750K lines to go.

I would never rewrite our matrix code algorithms which were originally 
written in F66.  There is too much error trapping and the wisdom /hard 
experience of many, many, many fixes in it.

Lynn