A comparison of some codes for the stiff oscillatory problem

In 1984, Gaffney [1] carried out a survey of codes for the numerical solution of the stiff oscillatory problem. This was prompted by a desire to derive an efficient method of lines algorithm for the reduced resistive MHD equations. His main conclusion was that none of the codes available at that time was entirely satisfactory for dealing with this problem. In the present paper, we outline the considerable progress that has been made since Gaffneyʹs survey and show that there now exist much more satisfactory codes for dealing with these problems. Two of the three FORTRAN codes that we recommend are both freely available from NETLIB, as well as from certain web pages, and so it is straightforward to reproduce all the numerical results given in the present paper.