A study of portability in technical and scientific computing

Abstract

The author reviews a portability study funded by the Swedish Board for Technical Development, covering portability not only for Fortran and similar languages but also for data and command languages. Fortran is shown not to be a portable language; even the proposed new standard leaves some deficiencies. The most important improvements would be:

• to make it possible to define range and precision for numeric quantities;

• to define a collating sequence for string handling based on the international standard character code;

• to introduce overflow control or, more generally, means for ensuring computational security.

Data portability can be achieved by using the standard character code in conjunction with standard labels. In command languages, no standard exists, but international committee work is in progress and the prospects for technical success are good.