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Re: F95 supports F77 too, right? (was Re: GCC 4.0 vs. 3.5
- From: Robert Dewar <dewar at gnat dot com>
- To: Nathanael Nerode <neroden at twcny dot rr dot com>
- Cc: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2004 08:26:49 -0400
- Subject: Re: F95 supports F77 too, right? (was Re: GCC 4.0 vs. 3.5
- References: <20040417134631.GA10945@twcny.rr.com>
Nathanael Nerode wrote:
I was under the impression that the new Fortran compiler was fully functional
as a Fortran 77 compiler, or at least that it was supposed to be before
g77 was removed from the tree. Was I mistaken?
Well certainly we hope that the new Fortran compiler will in
practice substitute effectively for g77, and for many users
of Fortran, success will be if this transfer is 100%
transparent, which you might argue says we don't need a
version number change. The point is that this is a major
change in technology, the switch to 4.0 (particularly the
.0 part of this) alerts people to the fact that there is
a major change in technology, and that the switch may not
be 100% smooth.
Indeed many organizations I know ban any use of software
whose version number ends .0 and this has become an unofficial
signal that software may be a more unreliable state, so we
need to undersatnd that signal in this change too. I personally
think the signal is appropriate in this case.