Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 11:14:15 +0100 From: Bob Bishop <rb@gid.co.uk> To: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Call for Fortran assistance. Message-ID: <l03020904b06a4bd3ca8a@[194.32.164.2]> In-Reply-To: <199710150751.RAA02149@word.smith.net.au>
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At 7:51 am -0000 15/10/97, Mike Smith wrote: >[...] >If you have ever done anything like this before, I'd *really* like to >know how you did it, before we bludgeon the customer and commit to a >total rewrite... Been there, done that. We got heavy with the customer, threatened them with common sense and fortunately got them to commit to a rewrite. Downside was some *very* unpleasant archaeology in their existing code to find out WTF was going on in there, surprised them in several instances. Oh, and we looked hard at f2c too, but that kind of code comes out looking even worse than when it goes in. [out-of-order] >Our initial design assumed that they would be able to read this on >standard input; wrong. :-) >Our second design threw the data through a FIFO, but Fortran has funny >formatting requirements for sequential-access data that have stymied us. If you really must run with the FORTRAN code, you have to crack this one. Is the formatting really impenetrable, or does the FORTRAN RTS get confused by the FIFO? We looked at using a portal, pretend to be a real file. >We tried converting to ASCII and then parsing it back in, but that's >too slow. Same here. FWIW, having got the customer to DTRT (this was a couple of years ago), we've just been invited back to do the next generation of that system. I wish you luck! -- Bob Bishop (0118) 977 4017 international code +44 118 rb@gid.co.uk fax (0118) 989 4254 between 0800 and 1800 UK
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