Re: 'fc' program and autoconf

[John W. Eaton]

On 17-Aug-2002, Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:

| > Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 21:12:33 -0400 (EDT)
| > From: "Steven G. Johnson" <address@hidden>
| 
| > > Thanks for the suggestion.  I think the fc Fortran compiler is long
| > > dead, so I installed this patch.
| > 
| > Perhaps I spoke too soon?  It turns out that 'fc' is the name of the
| > (native) Fortran compiler by Convex (now HP) on the HP Exemplar SPP.
| 
| If that's the only fc we have to worry about, we should be OK.  The
| Convex Exemplar is obsolete, and other than a hobbyist picking one up
| at a salvage auction I don't think we'll ever run into anyone actually
| booting one.  (Next you'll be finding old copies of manuals for the
| Kendall Square KSR-1.  :-)
| 
| In the unlikely case that someone still actually uses such a beast,
| they'll almost certainly have HP's Fortran as well (called "f77"), and
| since f77 preceded fc in the list we can safely omit the fc.

I'd guess that the only reason that fc is in the list at all is
because when I wrote the original configure code for Octave, I had
access to a Convex system (C-110 or something?) at the UT Center for
High Performance Computing, and for some reason, I knew that "fc" was
the name of the compiler.  I remember thinking back then that there
might be some conflict with the bash fc builtin, and I don't recall
actually ever building Octave on the Convex, but I left fc in the list
anyway.  I supposed I'd vote to remove it too.

jwe

-- 
www.octave.org        | Unfortunately we were hopelessly optimistic in 1954
www.che.wisc.edu/~jwe | about the problems of debugging FORTRAN programs.
                      |                                       -- J. Backus