Date: Sat, 02 Aug 1997 07:51:08 -0600
From: kmatick AT binghamton DOT edu
Subject: Re: What diffence is it?   fort77 and g77 [Shameless C plug]
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Message-ID: <870525867.17817@dejanews.com>
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In article <5rs1vs$87r AT freenet-news DOT carleton DOT ca>,
  ao950 AT FreeNet DOT Carleton DOT CA (Paul Derbyshire) wrote:
>
>
> For those of you masochistic enough to use Fortrash ;-), f2c sounds
> better. Reason: GCC optimizes C so tightly you can't cut it with
> monofilament, and f2c turns the Fortrash into C, which is then GCC'ed,
> with a known, tested, good optimizer. God only knows what g77's idea of
> optimization is... :-)

The fact is that gcc does not really do a great job at optimizing fortran
, or f2c'd fortran. Compile whatever fortran numerical benchmark you want
( eg a whetstone program ) and try it. You will find that f2c + gcc loses
to g77 with the same level of optimization ( eg -O2 ).

The difference is generally only about 10% , however.



> Also, if f2c ever f*cks up, you can mess with the intermediate C file.
> Better still, you can write a bunch of Fortrash programs you learned, and
> feed em to f2c, and look at the resulting C. Then, you have a good handle
> on learning C and can quickly graduate to C programming without needing to
> touch f2c or write another line of Fortrash again! :-)


If you can actually maintain the C code produced by f2c , then you are a
much better man than I .

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