[petsc-users] [petsc-announce] Question regarding updating PETSc Fortran examples to embrace post F77 constructs

[Blaise Bourdin]

FINALLY! Let's get rid of fortran77 free form in examples. I can't think of any reason to self inflict such a suffering. 

Are there ANY compiler around that people use and would not be able to process free form examples?I can see a point in keeping compatibility with fortran77 in petsc. It would make sense to keep a few old style pure f77 examples in the using-fortran section, but for the rest of the examples, using fixed form serves no purpose other than unexplicable bugs caused when a macro expands to more than 72 cols.

Going farther, but it is a really un gratifying job that nobody wants to do, it would make sense of having fortran77 bindings through iso_c_binding. That would allow better argument type checking and debugging (I.e. Inspecting the content of a petsc object from the debugger in a fortran program). Would that prevent F77 interoperability? I am not sure. 

Blaise

Sent from a mobile device

> On Aug 26, 2016, at 9:54 PM, Barry Smith <bsmith at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> 
> 
>   PETSc users,
> 
>    We've always been very conservative in PETSc to keep almost all our Fortran examples in a format that works with classic FORTRAN 77 constructs: fixed line format, (72 character limit) and no use of ; to separate operations on the same line, etc. 
> 
>   Is it time to forgo these constructs and use more modern Fortran conventions in all our examples?
> 
>    Any feedback is appreciated
> 
>    Barry
> 
> Note: it would continue to be possible to use PETSc in the FORTRAN 77 style, this is just a question about updating the examples.
> 
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