Lazarus (Delphi Compatible) Calling Numerical Recipes:
The Art of Scientific Computing¹
Fortran 95 subroutines (Statistics Analysis)

Lazarus is a Delphi compatible cross-platform IDE (think of it as Visual Object Pascal).  This page looks at interfacing a Lazarus main program² (ST95DLPH) with FORTRAN statistical analysis (avg, std dev, etc.) subprograms using single/REAL*4 arrays.  ST95DLPH was developed on an AMD Athlon II running WinXP Pro SP3 using Free Pascal Lazarus Project Version# 1.2.6 and Free Pascal 2.6.4.

Its purpose is to show how to further leverage Fortran engineering/mathematical/scientific libraries with a Lazarus front-end.

Files:
1. ST95DLPH.lpr - Project Main Source; launches main window and starts the event processing loop
   ST95DLPH.lpi - Project Information - XML format
   ST95DLPH.lps - XML format of list of unit files ever used in project (even if they have been later removed)
   ST95DLPH.res - Compiled Resource Script
   stunit1.pas - Pascal Main Unit
   stunit1.lfm - Form (shown below)
   NumRecGlbl.pas - Numerical Recipes global constants/variables/procedures unit, reused in other Lazarus projects & Object Pascal Librarys
2. nrlazrs.pas - user written FORTRAN Numerical Recipes - Lazarus Interface² Library of Free Pascal procedures (LIBRARY nrlazrs); Compile with batch file fpcdll.bat.  ST95DLPH unit stunit1 event procedure TDataForm.menuCalculateClick(...) calls LIBRARY nrlazrs procedure rMoment (...), which then calls the appropriate subroutines in sttstcs.dll to perform the statistical analysis.  LIBRARY nrlazrs procedures can also be called by non-Lazarus Free Pascal programs.  Pascal calling FORTRAN subprograms is straight-forward; see Free Pascal Programmer's Guide Chapter 12, Programming shared libraries.
   nrlazrs.dll - nrlazrs.pas dynamic link library
3. genetyp.inc³ - include file developed from major rewrite of Dawkins8 Biomorphs (Free Pascal dawkins8.dll callable from both Pascal and D programs); contains useful CONSTant and TYPE declarations
   nrtyp.inc - Numerical Recipes include file; CONSTant and TYPE declarations, including unit dimension constants (engineering/scientific applications; as an example, length is a dimension, but it is measured in units of feet (ft) or meters (m);  unit dimension constants are single char data, some of which are 8-bit ASCII;  these are meant as indicators (or program control values);  can not output these direct in Windows without ASCII to UTF-8 conversion)
   Both include files are used in NumRecGlbl.pas, nrlazrs.pas, and other Lazarus / Object Pascal source files
4. sttstcs.for - Numerical Recipes FORTRAN statistical analysis and support subprograms; user written subroutine D12R3MINMAX (...), Numerical Recipes subroutines AVEVAR (...), and MDIAN2 (...) are called by LIBRARY nrlazrs procedure rMoment (...);  to prevent a possible intellectual property violation, limited sttstcs.for source code available for download, since the original FORTRAN source code is published; the unmodified Numerical Recipes Statistical Analysis FORTRAN source code is available at Older Numerical Recipes book editions.
   sttstcs.dll - sttstcs.for dynamic link library; built using SilverFrost FTN95 Plato IDE
   sttstcs.lib - not used in this application; this can be either MicroSoft linker compatible (SLINK generated) OR Digital Mars D compatible (implib generated).
5. mathproc.dll - not called in this application; LIBRARY nrlazrs function fRandom (...) calls Numerical Recipes' IRBIT1 (...) and RAN3 (...) in mathproc.dll

stunit1
• Has comments explaining both Lazarus and program logic, including http links for documentation
• Uses unit NumRecGlbl
• Uses floating point (single) Data Points (calls different subroutines in sttstcs.dll than winstat - D Windows Statistical Analysis)
• Stores the Data Points as a 1 dimensional array (vector) global variable (rData[ ]). The array is passed to the FORTRAN subprograms.
• Displays the Data Points array in a TStringGrid matrix
  Properties Options in Object Inspector:
  [goFixedVertLine, goFixedHorzLine, goVertLine, goHorzLine, goRangeSelect, goEditing, goAlwaysShowEditor,   goSmoothScroll]
• Uses Hints
• Right justify the TStringGrid cells with:
  

  procedure TDataForm.PointMatrixPrepareCanvas(sender: TObject;         aCol, aRow: Integer; aState: TGridDrawState);     var         MyTextStyle: TTextStyle;     begin         MyTextStyle := PointMatrix.Canvas.TextStyle;         MyTextStyle.Alignment := taRightJustify;         PointMatrix.Canvas.TextStyle := MyTextStyle     end; (event OnPrepareCanvas in Object Inspector)

• Uses OnSetEditText event [TDataForm.PointMatrixSetEditText(Sender: TObject; ACol, ARow: Integer; const Value: string)] to edit grid cells and save data points in rData[ ] array - some may consider this inefficient, however, it did what was needed - allow the editing of each cell as it was entered.
• Uses TStringList for read/write Data Points files in procedure TDataForm.menuOpenClick(...) and procedure TDataForm.menuSaveAsClick(...)
  (can read Integer Data Points files produced by winstat - D Windows Statistical Analysis; winstat can read stunit1 written files but rounds to the nearest Integer)
• LIBRARY nrlazrs procedure rMoment (...) external declaration is in the interface section, following the var declaration
• stunit1 is still a little rough, will be refined and enhanced. As it is enhanced, form stunit1 may change.

NumRecGlbl
• Secondary Unit
• Includes genetyp.inc, nrtyp.inc
• Defines Numerical Recipes global variables used in primary unit stunit1
• Procedures to convert indices between one dimensional rData[ ] and two dimensional TStringGrid
• Has rudimentary command line parameter processing - may not be the most optimized method but it works; successfully called indirectly from a D module
• Unit NumRecGlbl procedures can be called by non-Lazarus Free Pascal programs - calling unit/library/program will need to include unit Interfaces in the uses clause - see D .dll Calling Free Pascal .dll - Pascal Files for an example
  (Pascal Librarys using Interfaces or LCLIntf will be large)

Compiling/Linking: ⁴
1. Create, compile, and link sttstcs.for.
2. Compile and link nrlazrs.pas into nrlazrs.dll:
   Open a MS-DOS Command Prompt
   fpcdll nrlazrs
3. Compile and link ST95DLPH
   Run Lazarus, Open and compile (Run, Compile) ST95DLPH