C vs. FORTRAN

[00704a-Liber]

In article <797 at garth.UUCP> smryan at garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan) writes:
|>Another possible plus for Fortran is that, by default (and for most
|>compilers, and in real F66 and F77, always) there is NO RECURSION,
|>and therefore no necessity of copying parameters to a stack. They
|>can be statically compiled in. This is only a benefit on some 
|>architectures.

What do you mean by 'statically compiled in'?  The references still need to
be copied; they (the references) are just copied to a fixed location
instead of to a relative position off the argument pointer (which points
into the stack).

|And no array allocation at run time. All arrays can be allocated in
|the compiler. All dope vectors except adjustable arrays are computable
|by the compiler.

Excluding dynamic arrays (arrays allocated in the heap), if you have a
stack, it takes ZERO more machine instructions to allocate arrays.  The
amount of space needed for a frame on the stack is determined at compile
time.
-- 
 _ __			NEVIN J. LIBER	..!ihnp4!ihlpf!nevin1	(312) 510-6194
' )  )				You are in a little twisting maze of
 /  / _ , __o  ____		 email paths, all different.
/  (_</_\/ <__/ / <_	These are solely MY opinions, not AT&T's, blah blah blah