Thorn Programming Languages

When you start writing a new thorn, the first decision to make is which programming language to use. The source code in Cactus thorns can be written in any mixture of Fortran 77, Fortran 90, C or C++. The following points should be considered when choosing a language to work in

• All functions designed for application thorn writers are available in all languages, however, some interfaces for infrastructure thorn writing are only available from C or C++.

• Stick to C rather than C++, unless you really need features from C++, this will help you with portability.

Whatever language you choose, if you want your thorn to be portable, and compile and run on multiple platforms, stick to the standards and don't use machine dependent extensions.