On Wed, 4 Feb 2004 15:01:21 GMT, Andy Cowley
wrote:

Peter O. Brackett wrote:


From Fortran to C, what a waste of coding time... and how many errors
were introduced in the translation? Heh, heh. :-)
And how many were fixed? From what he says about his
test results, very, very few errors were introduced.

Many would feel... What a crime?
Many more might feel "What crime?".

What's wrong with perfectly good Fortran?
Same thing that's wrong with a perfectly good boil on your ass. 8-)

BTW... there's nothing wrong with "GOTO"s that aren't readily fixed with
simple matching "COMEFROM" statements!

Try Cobol. The 'ALTER' statement was a computed come-from!
Fortran programmers can only dream of the job security that
flowed from that.

I give you (from ancient memory)...

NAME1 NOP NAME2
OI X'FF', NAME1 + 2
/* MORE CODE */
NAME2 EQU *

What's it do?

The math libraries in C are at least as good as those in Fortran and
the control and data structures actually exist.

Does DOD still require everything to be written in Ada?

Is NASTRAN still around or is there now a flight-rated C compiler.

Ever write any validated software? Now there's some fun.

Russ


Rest in Peace E. Djkystra!

A good Fortran programmer can write Fortran in any language. ;-)
What Neoklis has done seems to avoid that pitfall. If he has made
all that NEC2 spaghetti more comprehensible to mere mortals then
he's done us all a really big favour.

vy 73

Andy, M1EBV

Probably, they are still using 386 hardware. a while back NASA was looking
for nos stock to replace components in their 386 computers.

Look for an announcement in the next couple of years about a man rated 486
computer.


"Russ" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 4 Feb 2004 15:01:21 GMT, Andy Cowley

Is NASTRAN still around or is there now a flight-rated C compiler.

Ever write any validated software? Now there's some fun.

Russ


Rest in Peace E. Djkystra!

A good Fortran programmer can write Fortran in any language. ;-)
What Neoklis has done seems to avoid that pitfall. If he has made
all that NEC2 spaghetti more comprehensible to mere mortals then
he's done us all a really big favour.

vy 73

Andy, M1EBV

In article . net,
Peter O. Brackett wrote:

From Fortran to C, what a waste of coding time... and how many errors
were introduced in the translation? Heh, heh. :-)

"Make your peace with FORTRAN, for it is as perennial as crabgrass."

Many would feel... What a crime?

What's wrong with perfectly good Fortran?

BTW... there's nothing wrong with "GOTO"s that aren't readily fixed with
simple matching "COMEFROM" statements!

Heh. Real programmers used Assigned GOTO statements (or the even
studlier COBOL "ALTER" verb).

(grin, duck, run away very very fast....)

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Neoklis wrote:
Hi all,

I have just completed a translation of NEC2 from fortran to C which
was done "manually" ...

Neoklis,

I looked at the URL, and you've done a lot of work to update the code.
That is commendable, and you deserve thanks from the amateur community.
You certainly have my thanks. I'm curious to know how much regression
testing you've done.

73,
Bob AD3K
--
Robert L. Spooner
Registered Professional Engineer
Associate Research Engineer
Intelligent Control Systems Department

Applied Research Laboratory Phone: (814) 863-4120
The Pennsylvania State University FAX: (814) 863-7841
P. O. Box 30
State College, PA 16804-0030

Robert Spooner wrote in message ...

I looked at the URL, and you've done a lot of work to update the code.
That is commendable, and you deserve thanks from the amateur community.
You certainly have my thanks. I'm curious to know how much regression
testing you've done.

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the nice words. I tested the translation as much as I could
by comparing my version of program flow with the original source. It was
possible this way to spot a lot of bugs, most of them related to
"off-by-one" errors since fortran uses indices from 1 - n while C from
0 - (n-1). Also untangling GOTO's required a lot of changes mainly in
"spaghetti" sections and these were also prone to errors.

Eventually I debugged the code as far as was possible by constructing
input files that would hopefully put NEC2 through all possible paths
(there are about 1275 if conditionals and about 450 do/while loops!)
and comparing the output with the original fortran code. I then tried
a large number of input files found on the internet and compared outputs.
I had very good agreement in all my tests but I am sure that some
combination in an input file will trigger off hidden bugs.

73's "Nick" 5B4AZ

(Neoklis) wrote in message . com...
Robert Spooner wrote in message ...

I looked at the URL, and you've done a lot of work to update the code.
That is commendable, and you deserve thanks from the amateur community.
You certainly have my thanks. I'm curious to know how much regression
testing you've done.

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the nice words. I tested the translation as much as I could
by comparing my version of program flow with the original source. It was
possible this way to spot a lot of bugs, most of them related to
"off-by-one" errors since fortran uses indices from 1 - n while C from
0 - (n-1). Also untangling GOTO's required a lot of changes mainly in
"spaghetti" sections and these were also prone to errors.

Eventually I debugged the code as far as was possible by constructing
input files that would hopefully put NEC2 through all possible paths
(there are about 1275 if conditionals and about 450 do/while loops!)
and comparing the output with the original fortran code. I then tried
a large number of input files found on the internet and compared outputs.
I had very good agreement in all my tests but I am sure that some
combination in an input file will trigger off hidden bugs.

73's "Nick" 5B4AZ

Hi Nick,
you have made most of the work made by a New Zeland company that is
selling Supernec.
For all using Matlab, as me, your work is very interesting since doing
some work it is possible to use the highly optimized Matlab routines
to make the hard matrix work of the program. Furthermore, it is also
possible to use the visualization capabilities of the same program to
see the results (or the inputs).
Matlab code can be compiled with other C or even Fortran codes.

Thanks then!

(Maurizio) wrote in message . com...

Hi Nick,
you have made most of the work made by a New Zeland company that is
selling Supernec.

Selling! Sounds nice ;-)

For all using Matlab, as me, your work is very interesting since doing
some work it is possible to use the highly optimized Matlab routines
to make the hard matrix work of the program. Furthermore, it is also
possible to use the visualization capabilities of the same program to
see the results (or the inputs).

Must confess my math/science is old and rusty - I am 55 years old and
retired early, did some fortran & algol programming around 1970 when I
was a student and taught myself Linux/C later 90's while waiting for
retirement. I don't think I remember enough on matrix math and don't
know Matlab at all to do this myself. I hope my translation is clear
enough for others to contribute more advanced features!


Regards

"Nick" 5B4AZ

"Neoklis" wrote in message
om...
Hi all,

I have just completed a translation of NEC2 from fortran to C which
was done "manually" and thus has no dependency on f2c and similar auto
translators. I have also incorporated changes to the source code so
that built-in limitations are removed as far as possible and the use
of file storage for solving complex structures is not needed.

More info and source/binary packages form the nec2 archives:

http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu/swindex.html

Please note my email address is: neoklisk-AT-cytanet-DOT-com-DOT-cy

Best regards

Neoklis - 5B4AZ