(j3.2006) (SC22WG5.4204) RE: RE: 43 Fortran compilers

[Bill Long]

I suspect the University of Waterloo compilers were Watfor and Watfiv. 
These are what were used in by the programming classes I took as an 
undergrad (1969-73) on an IBM 360/65.  These "compilers" were really 
interpreters that translated the code very quickly and produced detailed 
error messages, including at runtime.  The execution speed was poor. 
However, for a bunch of newbie programmers who compiled a program many 
times before it ran (those were the other clowns in the class, not me, 
of course :) )  this was the ideal balance.  Even when I migrated to the 
IBM Fortran "H" compiler (much better execution performance), Watfiv was 
still useful as a debugging tool.

Cheers,
Bill


Loren P Meissner wrote:
> There was some Fortran language research going on at Univ of Waterloo (in
> Ont, Canada) by 1974.
> My copy of papers from JPL/SIGNUM Fortran Preprocessor Workshop (Nov 1974)
> [which was largely motivated by Fortran response to the "structured
> programming" fad] includes a one-page paper "Designing a portable
> preprocessor" by M Malcolm and L Rogers of Waterloo. It mentions "Altran
> translator and run-time support software are written in portable Fortran
> except for some M6 macro calls . The M6 macro processor is written in
> portable Fortran ." - Was this "portable Fortran" the same as "Waterloo
> Fortran"?
> 
> Loren P Meissner
> (Have you ever imagined a world without hypothetical situations?)
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: j3-bounces at j3-fortran.org [mailto:j3-bounces at j3-fortran.org] On Behalf
> Of Bill Long
> Sent: Monday, March 01, 2010 3:03 PM
> To: fortran standards email list for J3
> Cc: sc22wg5 at open-std.org
> Subject: Re: (j3.2006) (SC22WG5.4198) RE: 43 Fortran compilers
> 
> 
> 
> Ian D Chivers wrote:
>> I would be interested in knowing what they were.
>>
>> I worked at Imperial College from 1978-1986 On CDC kit mainly (6400, 
>> 6500, 170, 174) and we had
>>   
>>   CDC Fortran
>>   Minnesota Fortran
> 
> Indeed, M77.  I looked at the manual and found that, in 1980, M77 had the
> radical extension of A .op. B where op was and, or, xor, ... and A and B
> were numeric type variables, with the operations bitwise.  Only 30 years
> ago.  Maybe this idea needs a bit more time to mature. :)
> 
> Cheers
> Bill
> 
> 
>> As the main two supported Fortran compilers.
>>
>> I also vaguely remember a Waterloo Fortran.
>>
>> There was a CDC 1700 and I think that had a Fortran compiler.
>> Would that have counted as another compiler?
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> ian
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: j3-bounces at j3-fortran.org [mailto:j3-bounces at j3-fortran.org] On 
>> Behalf Of David Muxworthy
>> Sent: 01 March 2010 17:47
>> To: sc22wg5 at open-std.org
>> Subject: (j3.2006) (SC22WG5.4197) 43 Fortran compilers
>>
>> One or two people seemed surprised when I said at the WG5 meeting that 
>> there were 43 Fortran compilers in the early 1960s.  The figure was 
>> taken from Oswald, H. (1964), 'The various Fortrans', Datamation vol 
>> 10 (August), pp 25-29.  Oswald was reviewing 16 different Fortran 
>> systems.  I think I also said outside the meeting that the first 
>> Fortran on a non-IBM machine was in 1961-2.  In fact it was in 1960 on 
>> a Philco 2000, but not called Fortran.  The first non-IBM 'Fortran' 
>> was on a Univac SS80 in 1961.
>>
>> David
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> 

-- 
Bill Long                                           longb at cray.com
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