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From: Wolfgang Kilian <see...@domain.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Function questions?
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2012 15:01:43 +0200
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On 08/28/2012 02:38 PM, Gary Scott wrote:
> On 8/28/2012 1:49 AM, Wolfgang Kilian wrote:
>> On 08/28/2012 02:11 AM, Gary Scott wrote:
>> [...]
>> I understand that Fortran is used predominantly in scientific computing,
>> where the main purpose of programs is to calculate numbers, and the
>> underlying mathematics is expressible in terms of functions (in the
>> mathematical sense). Most of this can and should be done without side
>> effects or INTENT(OUT) arguments. Otherwise, use subroutines.
>>
>> -- Wolfgang
>>
>
> Fortran is a general purpose programming language. It is used for a wide
> variety and type of applications. The majority of those need to call C
> APIs which don't abide by the restricted use of functions as only for
> calculating a return value (they nearly all have side effects with the
> return value being an error code).

This is true, but also tends to be system-dependent, so Fortran wrapper 
(sub)routines are likely to be present that localize the system 
dependencies.  For OpenMP, MPI, Lapack, etc. there are native Fortran 
interfaces, which have their own conventions anyway.

-- Wolfgang


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