Ratfiv
Encyclopedia
Ratfiv is an enhanced version of the Ratfor programming language, a preprocessor
for Fortran
designed to give it C
-like capabilities. Fortran was widely used for scientific programming but had very basic control-flow
primitives ("do" and "goto
") and no "macro
" facility which limited its expressiveness.
The name of the language is a pun (Ratfor (RATional FORtran) -> "Rat Four" -> "Rat Five" -> RatFiv).
Ratfiv was developed by Bill Wood at the Institute for Cancer Research
, Philadelphia, PA in the early 1980s and released on several DECUS
(Digital Equipment Users Group) SIG (Special Interest Group) tapes. It is based on the original Ratfor by B. Kernighan
and P. J. Plauger
, with rewrites and enhancements by David Hanson and friends (U. of Arizona), Joe Sventek and Debbie Scherrer (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
).
Ratfiv V2.1 was distributed on the DECUS RSX82a SIG tape.
Preprocessor
In computer science, a preprocessor is a program that processes its input data to produce output that is used as input to another program. The output is said to be a preprocessed form of the input data, which is often used by some subsequent programs like compilers...
for Fortran
Fortran
Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...
designed to give it C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
-like capabilities. Fortran was widely used for scientific programming but had very basic control-flow
Control flow
In computer science, control flow refers to the order in which the individual statements, instructions, or function calls of an imperative or a declarative program are executed or evaluated....
primitives ("do" and "goto
Goto
goto is a statement found in many computer programming languages. It is a combination of the English words go and to. It performs a one-way transfer of control to another line of code; in contrast a function call normally returns control...
") and no "macro
Macro
A macro in computer science is a rule or pattern that specifies how a certain input sequence should be mapped to an output sequence according to a defined procedure...
" facility which limited its expressiveness.
The name of the language is a pun (Ratfor (RATional FORtran) -> "Rat Four" -> "Rat Five" -> RatFiv).
Ratfiv was developed by Bill Wood at the Institute for Cancer Research
Institute for Cancer Research
Institute for Cancer Research can refer to at least two separate organizations:* American Institute for Cancer Research, located in Washington, DC...
, Philadelphia, PA in the early 1980s and released on several DECUS
DECUS
The Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society was an independent computer user group related to Digital Equipment Corporation.The Connect User Group Community, formed from the consolidation in May, 2008 of DECUS, Encompass, HP-Interex, and ITUG is Hewlett-Packard’s largest user community...
(Digital Equipment Users Group) SIG (Special Interest Group) tapes. It is based on the original Ratfor by B. Kernighan
Brian Kernighan
Brian Wilson Kernighan is a Canadian computer scientist who worked at Bell Labs alongside Unix creators Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie and contributed to the development of Unix. He is also coauthor of the AWK and AMPL programming languages. The 'K' of K&R C and the 'K' in AWK both stand for...
and P. J. Plauger
P. J. Plauger
P. J. Plauger is an author and entrepreneur.He has written and co-written articles and books about programming style, software tools, and the C programming language....
, with rewrites and enhancements by David Hanson and friends (U. of Arizona), Joe Sventek and Debbie Scherrer (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory conducting unclassified scientific research. It is located on the grounds of the University of California, Berkeley, in the Berkeley Hills above the central campus...
).
Ratfiv V2.1 was distributed on the DECUS RSX82a SIG tape.