C++ for FORTRAN Programmers [Paperback]

Ira Pohl (Author, Preface)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1997

C++ for Fortran Programmers provides a smooth transition to C++ and object-oriented programming by building on the reader's knowledge of FORTRAN. Noted C++ authority Ira Pohl uses his trademark technique of "dissection" to illustrate the underlying structure of programs and help readers understand design trade-offs. Where appropriate, C++ code is given with equivalent FORTRAN code. FORTRAN 77 has been augmented by other versions of FORTRAN, including FORTRAN 90. Based on the proposed ANSI C++ standard, this book covers the latest language features including detailed discussions of templates, STL, and exception handling.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Using your existing knowledge of Fortran, C++ for Fortran Programmers gets you up and running with C++ quickly. By showing how individual elements of a Fortran program compare and translate into C++, this book helps you make a smooth transition to C++ and object-oriented concepts. Best-selling author and C++ authority Ira Pohl uses his trademark "dissection" technique to illustrate the underlying structure of programs and to help you understand design trade-offs. Scientific and engineering coding examples are featured throughout the text.

* Provides a smooth transition to C++ and object-oriented programming for programmers already familiar with Fortran.
* Includes C++ to Fortran equivalencies, making it easy to move from one language to another.
* Features engineering computations throughout; important scientific types such as complex number, vector, and polynomial are implemented.
* Incorporates the proposed ANSI C++ Standard including bool, namespaces, and the STL library.
* Features a chapter on the use of STL and efficient generic programming.
* Supplies fully tested program code on the World Wide Web at aw/cp/authors/pohl/c++_fortran/c++_fortran.html.
0201924838B04062001

About the Author

Ira Pohl is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz and holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. His research interests include artificial intelligence, the C and C++ programming languages, practical complexity problems, heuristic search methods, deductive algorithms, and educational and social issues. He originated error analysis in heuristic search methods and deductive algorithms. Professor Pohl was formerly a Mackay professor at University of California- Berkeley and a ZWO fellow in the Netherlands. He is the author or co-author of Object-Oriented Programming Using C++, C++ Distilled: A Concise Ansi/Iso Reference and Style Guide, C by Dissection: The Essentials of C Programming, A Book on C: Programming in C, C++ for C Programmers, C++ for Fortran Programmers, C++ for Pascal Programmers, and Turbo C: The Essentials of C Programming, all published by Addison-Wesley. 0201924838AB04062001

Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Addison Wesley Longman; 1st edition (January 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201924838
• ISBN-13: 978-0201924831
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 1.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,333,445 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Doesn't live up to its title, August 12, 2003

By 

avoraciousreader (Somewhere in the Space Time Continuum) - See all my reviews

This review is from: C++ for FORTRAN Programmers (Paperback)

First, let me say that this does seem to be a perfectly respectable C++ book.
One could do worse, and it does not seem that knowing Fortran is a prerequisite.

It's the "... For Fortran Programmers" part that is disappointing. I'm a member of the ostensible target demographic -- someone who has programmed for decades off and on in Fortran and is looking to learn the C (/ C++) language -- and this book sounded like exactly what I was looking for. Unfortunately, it did not live up to this expectation. The Fortran related material occupies only the first 20% of the book (plus a brief appendix), essentially the plain-old-C chapters.

The "for Fortran programmers" content is mostly concerned with those areas where there are direct equivalences between the two languages that can be summarized neatly in tables (e.g. Fortran's "double precision" is the same as C's "double"). This kind of info is useful, but an experienced Fortran programmer will easily pick it up anyway. When it comes to more complicated issues such as control structures (IF, etc.), the emphasis seems to be to present Fortran equivalents of C structures, rather than the reverse. I guess this could be seen as using the presumed Fortran background to explicate a C language description, but I'd think most Fortran programmers learning C will be thinking the reverse, "I know how to do <X> in Fortran, how do I achieve the same thing in C?" Compounding this, the assumption seems to be that the Fortran programmed in is Fortran 90, which is far from universally adopted (especially with the immense amount of legacy code in use).

Of course, a lot of the C++ language simply has no direct equivalent in Fortran. But if this were really written from the start for Fortran programmers there should be specific discussion showing how to do things that a Fortran programmer finds clumsy (such as matrix manipulation) more smoothly with the "++" part of C++, and the book should use examples drawn from scientific programming (which has been the primary domain of Fortran programmers).

I am not saying this book should be a simple translation manual, but it should start with what the Fortran programmer already knows and build from there, and deal with problems that the Fortran programmer is typically interested in.

In summary, this is a decent C++ book, but the Fortran content seems to be a clumsy afterthought, grafted on for marketing reasons.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A disappointing book, February 12, 2001

By 

Brian Bowman (CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: C++ for FORTRAN Programmers (Paperback)

This is the only text I know of that tries to take the Fortran programmer directly into C++. This attempt was a poor effort at best. Ira's other book C++ for C Programmers was highly recommended to me to learn C++. Being a Fortran programmer and not a C programmer, I thought Ira would have made this book at a comparable level. Instead he used the C++ for C Programmers text with a few changes for Fortran syntax. This shows a minimal effort on Ira's part, very disappointing! The reader of this book needs a good background in C to understand it. And if your C background is good, get the C++ for C Programmers book. C++ for Fortran Programmers should be rewritten for programmers with only a Fortran background as the title indicates. Then, I believe this text could fill a unique and important gap in the literature. A second issue I have with this text is Ira's writing style. He writes at a high level thus you need to be able to read at that level. That's all fine, but then he needs to be a competent writer of the English language. Ira's technical writing fails miserably here (showing short, weak examples in no way makes up for this!). My advice for Fortran only programmers is get a short introductory book on C and then get a short (introductory?) book on C++. Your basic programming skills should easily cover anything else. Ira should have done something like this when he wrote the book.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Book does not discuss some elementary Fortran statements, September 2, 1998

By 

John C. Price ([e-mail]) (Boulder Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: C++ for FORTRAN Programmers (Paperback)

I feel the title of the book is extremely misleading. With no mention of "common", no discussion of "subroutine", or "equivalence" this book is not suitable for a Fortran programmer who wishes to learn C++ by converting statements from F. to C. Nor are the C++ concepts placed in the context of Fortran. Author could write a book on every language for C++ programmers with minimal effort - just include a few short simple programs in the other language. Don't buy if you expect to benefit from your Fortran experiance.