Fortran vs. C for numerical work (SUMMARY)

[Peter S. Shenkin]

In article <1990Dec4.190148.4026 at ariel.unm.edu> john at ghostwheel.unm.edu (John Prentice) writes:
>In article <26434:Dec404:42:4990 at kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd at kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>>One of the great advantages of the classical Fortran numerical libraries
>>is that they are so reliable that the code never has to be maintained. A
>>library is a library is a library.
>
>I hate to do it, but I have to at least qualify this point. I have a good friend
>who is in charge of maintaining the SLATEC and IMSL libraries at the Air
>Force Weapons Laboratory....
>.  His experience with these well worn and tested libraries is
>that they quite often will not compile on new machines and will often
>fail the quick checks until someone goes in and makes minor changes to the
>code.  Now, the changes are usually minor, more often then not it is
>just a question of changing some floating point test for small numbers, etc...
>However, there have also been cases where the answers are just plain
>wrong....

I have had the same experience with the Harwell subroutines....

	-P.
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Peter S. Shenkin, Department of Chemistry, Barnard College, New York, NY  10027
(212)854-1418  shenkin at cunixf.cc.columbia.edu(Internet)  shenkin at cunixf(Bitnet)
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