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Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 16:24:39 -0500 (CDT)
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From: Tony Kimball <Anthony.Kimball@East.Sun.COM>
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To: mike@smith.net.au
Cc: hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Call for Fortran assistance
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> Our second design threw the data through a FIFO, but Fortran has funny 
> formatting requirements for sequential-access data that have stymied
> us.

Generally, there is a header word for each binary record in a
sequential-access file indicating how many bytes are in the record.
Thus
	write(7) [1:5], 2.0d0*[1:5] 
(f90 syntax used for conciseness) results in a file containing binary
data representing the values { 60, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 2.0, 4.0, 6.0, 8.0, 10.0 }
(assuming real*8.)

> We've offered to write a Fortran-callable C procedure that can manage 
> reading the FIFO, but they don't use procedures much (!) and want an 
> all-fortran solution.

Now you're talking about a mentally defective customer.  I can't fix
that:-)  

What is the platform?  You should be able to use shared memory, if
there are fortran bindings to libc available.  Or you could just
provide a library of fortran bindings written in C and not tell them
about it.  It sound like they're clueless enough not to be able to
tell the difference.