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by Tim Parker
So far in this section we’ve looked at a number of popular programming languages and their support under Linux. Maybe you’re not a big fan of C, C++, awk, Perl, or Tcl. Maybe you really want to program in Ada or FORTRAN on your Linux box. Don’t give up hope. Linux has a wide variety of language compilers and support tools that have been ported to work under this operating system. This chapter takes a brief tour of the languages you can find and where to get them.
We can’t possibly hope to cover every language available for Linux: there are new ports and language developments made almost weekly. However, we’ve taken a list of the most popular languages and gone from there.
The Ada language is in widespread use in military applications and has gained acceptance over the last decade. With the popularity of the language among defense-related application programmers, it was inevitable that several ports of Ada would appear for Linux. The most popular version of Ada for Linux is the GNAT (Gnu Ada Translator) package developed and primarily supported through New York University. For information about the GNAT project or for information on the latest releases of GNAT, send email to gnat-request@cs.nyu.edu. The current version of GNAT is available from several FTP sites and will need to be compiled on your Linux system using the GNU C compiler.
Tip:
Several FTP sites mirror the NYU GNAT archive. You can find the most recent version of GNAT at the FTP site tsx-11.mit.edu in the directory /pub/linux/packages/ada.
GNAT covers both the Ada83 and Ada90 standards for the Ada language and is compatible with some commercial Ada compilers.
COBOL has been around for decades and it is likely that there is more COBOL code written in the world than any other language. There are several commercial ports of COBOL compilers available for Linux, most notably the COBOL-85 port from Acucobol (see http://www.acucobol.com for more information). To date no public domain version of a COBOL compiler is available for Linux although there are several COBOL tools available from Linux FTP sites.
A DSP (Digital Signal Processing) package called ObjectProDSP is available for Linux. ObjectProDSP is an X-based object-oriented digital signal processing development tool useful for many engineering and science applications.
Tip:
Several FTP sites offer ObjectProDSP for Linux. You can find several versions at the FTP site tsx-11.mit.edu in the directory /pub/linux/packages/dsp. If you use a Web browser for FTP access, use the URL ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linus/packages/dsp.
The author of ObjectProDSP can be reached through email at mtnmath@mtnmath.com.
Eiffel is an object-oriented programming language that has a high code-reuse capability. Eiffel has developed a loyal following since its development by Bertrand Meyer in the late 1980s. Eiffel has been placed in the public domain and is managed by the Nonprofit International Consortium for Eiffel (NICE). As an OO language, Eiffel is superb with all the features you would expect.
Tip:
Eiffel for Linux can be found at several FTP sites and through the Web at http://www.cm.cf.ac.uk/Tower.
FORTRAN (Formula Translator) is one of the standard programming languages of the ’60s and ’70s, especially in the fields of science and engineering. There are several ports of the FORTRAN77 version of FORTRAN available on Linux FTP sites, and ports of FORTRAN90 other than commercial releases are starting to appear as well.
Tip:
Several FTP sites offer versions of FORTRAN for Linux. You can find several versions at the FTP site tsx-11.mit.edu in the directory /pub/linux/packages/fortran. Several Linux FORTRAN support tools are available there, too.
Apart from the FORTRAN compilers, there are several support tools that have been converted to run under Linux. Most of these are available through the FTP site mentioned above, including converters from FORTRAN to C.
The toolpack package is useful for FORTRAN programmers. It includes a number of utilities for simplifying output formatting and printing tasks. The package mpfun allows for multiple-precision FORTRAN calculations with up to 16 million decimal digits (more than enough for most people!). There are also several tools available that check your FORTRAN code for compliance with the FORTRAN77 and FORTRAN90 standards, as well as portability.
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