C++ / Fortran interoperability
in [Fortran]
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From: Thomas Koenig on 5 Aug 2010 18:26 Has anybody been thinking about C++ / Fortran interoperability? Obviously, there are a lot of things in C++ that Fortran cannot do, such as multiple inheritance, templates and constructors. Still, a common subset larger than the C interoperability probably exists, and might well be useful. For practical purposes, such an interoperability might be restricted to a compiler family. Comments?
From: Richard Maine on 5 Aug 2010 19:20 Thomas Koenig <tkoenig(a)netcologne.de> wrote: > Has anybody been thinking about C++ / Fortran interoperability? Not me, partly because I don't know enough C++ to do even a half-decent job. But... > For practical purposes, such an interoperability might be restricted > to a compiler family. I'd think that a really bad idea. Sounds like something that would be literally worse than useless in that it could do harm. Unless... Perhaps I misunderstand what you are saying. There does seem a good chance of that. If you want to think about doing an experimental implementation that works with only some compilers, that seems sensible and natural. But the specification of an interoperability feature should not be specific to a compiler; it should be in terms of the relevant standards. To me, there is a huge difference between the specification and an implementation. The above-quoted words sound to me like they are talking about a specification that only applied to a compiler family, which I would find objectionable. I suspect instead that you might be talking about implementation for a compiler family. Otherwise, it reminds me a bit of a NASA "interoperability" panel that I was once asked to be our center's representative on, as people knew I had an interest in interoperability. In this case, it had to do with interoperability of things like software applications such as word processors and others widely used throughout the agency. Then I found out the ground rules the panel was to operate under. It was decreed by the high-level bureaucrat who commissioned the panel that only Microsoft products were to be used. It was made clear to me that even mentioning other possibilities was likely to draw ire from above. It was one of those orders that you were not supposed to question. As far as I could tell, the panel was not about actually facilitating interoperability, but instead about how to work around an arbitrary and absolute mandate to use non-interoperable software. We could only look at things like how to set up Windows server systems that Mac, Linux, Sun, and other users could access. I declined to serve on the panel under those ground rules, as it sounded to me more like a panel on non-interoperability. -- Richard Maine | Good judgment comes from experience; email: last name at domain . net | experience comes from bad judgment. domain: summertriangle | -- Mark Twain
From: Nick Maclaren on 6 Aug 2010 04:02 In article <1jmrdhz.4760cd1mbcaxeN%nospam(a)see.signature>, Richard Maine <nospam(a)see.signature> wrote: >Thomas Koenig <tkoenig(a)netcologne.de> wrote: > >> Has anybody been thinking about C++ / Fortran interoperability? > >Not me, partly because I don't know enough C++ to do even a half-decent >job. But... Nor do I, though I am horribly afraid that I may be approaching the state of being one of the more knowledgeable people - and my ignorance of both is considerable! >> For practical purposes, such an interoperability might be restricted >> to a compiler family. > >I'd think that a really bad idea. Sounds like something that would be >literally worse than useless in that it could do harm. Unless... Yes. And to finish your dots ... unless pigs start to fly. The killer isn't the general facilities, but the details and, far, far worse, the semantic model. I don't know either at all well, but even the existing C interoperability is a mess in those respects. The chances of there being a close enough match for the advanced features are infinitesimal. I was involved in IBM's CEE project, and even a single company had major problems getting PL/I and Cobol to interoperate at that level. And, yes, that was differences in the semantic model, though I can no longer remember the details. However, that doesn't mean to say that NOTHING can be done. I have a back-burner project to design and implement some interoperability for data alone. If I can get enough going in a test version of gfortran, it would justify proposing a TR. Another great IF .... It is possible that there is enough commonality to do something, but the first step would be to do the investigation of the details and semantics. Regards, Nick Maclaren.
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