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Automated Fortran--C++ Bindings for Large-Scale Scientific Applications (1904.02546v2)
Published 4 Apr 2019 in cs.SE
Abstract: Although many active scientific codes use modern Fortran, most contemporary scientific software "libraries" are implemented in C and C++. Providing their numerical, algorithmic, or data management features to Fortran codes requires writing and maintaining substantial amounts of glue code. This article introduces a tool that automatically generates native Fortran 2003 interfaces to C and C++ libraries. The tool supports C++ features that have no direct Fortran analog, such as templated functions and exceptions. A set of simple examples demonstrate the utility and scope of the tool, and timing measurements with a mock numerical library illustrate the minimal performance impact of the generated wrapper code.