New languages for numerical software

  • Authors:

  • Bill Coughran;Eric Grosse

  • Affiliations:

  • -;-

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the SIGNUM Conference on the Programming Environment for Development of Numerical Software
  • Year:
  • 1978

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Abstract

Existing languages for numerical software are not altogether satisfactory. Fortran, even preprocessed, has troublesome limitations. Unfortunately, proposed replacements have been discouragingly large, or omit essential features like variably dimensioned arrays and Fortran compatibility. A new language has been designed to include such crucial features, but otherwise be as small as possible. This language, called T, includes: indention to indicate block structure, novel loop syntax, and engineering format for real constants. By preprocessing into PL/I, implementation cost was kept low. But this language can only be regarded as a stopgap. The next step is to deal with more fundamental issues, by more fully exploiting arrays, by making pointers available in a controlled way, and by arranging for better declaration and syntax for using subroutine libraries.