All,

I have been doing some language exploration in v7/4.3bsd and came across 
Software Tools (not the pascal version). It's written using ratfor, 
which I had seen in the v7 UPM. I fired up v7 and tried my hand at the 
first example:

    # copy - copy input characters to output
             integer getc
             integer c

             while(getc(c) != EOF)
                     call putc(c)
             stop
             end

The first thing I noticed was that it read more like C than Fortran (I 
know C quite well, Fortran just a smidge)... awesome, right? So I ran 
the preprocessor on it and got the following f77 code:

    c copy - copy input characters to output
           integer getc
           integer c
    c     while
    23000 if(.not.(getc(c) .ne. eof))goto 23001
              call putc(c)
              goto 23000
    c     endwhile
    23001 continue
           stop
           end

Cool. The way it translated the EOF test is weird, but ok. Trying to 
compile it results in complaints about missing getc and putc:

    $ f77 copy.f
    copy.f:
        MAIN:
    Undefined:
    _getc_
    _putc_
    _end

Ah well, no worries. I know that they're in the c lib, but don't about 
fortran libs... Meanwhile, over on 4.3BSD, it compiles without issue. 
But running it is no joy:

    $ ./a.out
    This is a test
    $

I remembered that the authors mentioned something about EOF, so I 
tweaked the code (changed EOF to -1) and rebuilt/reran:

    $ ./a.out
    This is a test
    This is a test
    $

Fascinating. Dunno why no complaints from F77 about the undefined EOF 
(or maybe mis-defined), but hey, it works and it's fun.

I'm curious how much ratfor was used in bell labs and other locations 
running v6, v7, and the BSD's. When I first came across it, I was under 
the impression that it was a wrapper to make f66 bearable, but the 
manpage says it's best used with f77, so that's not quite right. As 
someone coming from c, I totally appreciate what it does to make the 
control structures I know and love available, but that wasn't the case 
back then, was it? C was pretty new... Was it just a temporary fix to a 
problem that just went away, or is there tons of ratfor out there in the 
wild that I just haven't seen? I found ratfor77 and it runs just fine on 
my mac with a few tweaks, so it's not dead:

    ratfor77 -C copy.r | tee copy.f
    C Output from Public domain Ratfor, version 1.0
    C copy - copy input characters to output
           integer getc
           integer c
    23000 if(getc(c) .ne. eof)then
           call putc(c)
           goto 23000
           endif
    23001 continue
           stop
           end

What's the story? Oh, and in v6 it looks like it was rc - ratfor 
compiler, which is not present in v7 or 4.3BSD - is there a backstory 
there, too?

Will