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silverdan · Joined: 14 May 2009 Posts: 29

I have a c# application that calls a legacy Fortran dll. Once the C# application calls the Fortran dll, the Fortran dll spits out some binary files. There has been a request to see if Fortran could pass the contents of the files directly to C#. Rather than having C# read the files.

Maybe in one of the following ways?

1. Could this be done by passing a Fortran object to C#?

2. Could this be done by creating a Fortran module with a bunch of variables populated, then have c# access those variables directly to create its own C# object?

3. Pass some file stream from Fortran to C#? Again, rather than creating the files, somehow pass the data to C#?

Are any of these possible or maybe something better to do?

PaulLaidler · Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 7:00 am Post subject:

First of all you will need to use the same Fortran compiler to read the binary as that was used to create it. Also you will need the code in order to replicate it in the read instructions. If it was FTN95 then...

Look up what the help file has to say about accessing Fortran arrays from C#. Start in .NET platform->Calling Fortran from other .NET languages.

Andrew · Joined: 09 Sep 2004 Posts: 232 Location: Frankfurt, Germany

You can pass .NET objects around, from C# to Fortran and from Fortran to C#. Objects can be created in the Fortran, populated and passed to C# or vice versa, however you want. Delegates should be avoided however. The most appropriate solution would depend on what exactly you want to achieve and the amount of data you want to pass around.

Topics that will be of interest in the help file are the .NET extensions such as:

- new@
- assembly_interface
- assembly_external

You also free to use streams if you like. After all they are .NET objects too and can be passed around in same way. If you wanted to create a stream, write to it and then pass the stream on then that would also be possible.

silverdan · Joined: 14 May 2009 Posts: 29

Andrew,
Thanks for your reply. Can you point me to a sample of how to pass a stream from FTN95 to .NET?

I know how to use OPEN in Fortran and WRITE to a file. I also know how to use StreamReader in C#. However, how can I open a file and a stream in FTN95 in one Class and then read that stream in a C# Class?

--Dan

Andrew · Joined: 09 Sep 2004 Posts: 232 Location: Frankfurt, Germany

You can do this with use of the ASSEMBLY_EXTERNAL and OBJECT extensions pointed at earlier in the thread. But, and example of passing a StreamReader could be...