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FORTRAN

Language type:

S - block-structured

Description:

FORTRAN (from FORmula TRANSlation) is one of the oldest programming languages. Originally developed in the late 1950s, FORTRAN has moved through many versions and is still popular even today.
FORTRAN is characterized by its good support for mathematics, especially floating-point computation, its lack of modular programming structures, and implicit declarations, and odd control-flow constructs. FORTRAN is normally case-insensitive. In older versions of the language, the position of text on lines was significant; Fortran90 and later versions support free-form input.
FORTRAN has had many versions over the years, some of the most popular being: FORTRAN I, FORTRAN II, FORTRAN IV, FORTRAN 77, and Fortran90. The current standard is Fortran 95 (ISO/IEC 1539-1), and it includes many modern structured programming features in a traditional Fortran framework. Many specialized and parallel-processing versions of FORTRAN have also been created.

Origin:

John Backus, IBM, 1954-57

See Also:

C    PL/1    ACSL   

Remarks:

FORTRAN has long been a language of choice for complex scientific calculations, engineering models, statistics, and signal processing. Its simple code structure and lack of dynamic data structures make it highly amenable to compiler optimization and targetting to special hardware (eg. vector supercomputers).
Every few years, somebody predicts the imminent death of FORTRAN, and it never happens.

Links:

Fortran Related Links

Compaq Fortran home page

Fortran 90/95 Info page

Fortran 90 FAQ

Official home of Fortran standards

Date:

Last updated 7/9/01

Sample code:

        PROGRAM Rad
! Simple FORTRAN program
        REAL P,R,C
        IF (.NOT. (R = 0.0)) THEN
         P = 3.1415926
         R = 2.5
         C = P * R
         PRINT *, "C = ", C
        END IF
	END

Descriptions in this dictionary are ©1997-99 Neal Ziring. Some examples copyright of their respective authors. Some technologies and languages are trademarked. Permission to copy descriptions is granted as long as authorship credit is preserved.

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