A review and analysis of Fortran 8x

ABSTRACT

The ANSI Standards Subcommittee X3J3 on Fortran has recently completed a draft proposed standard for the Fortran programming language. The draft proposed standard, known informally as Fortran 8x, is a revision of the current standard X3.9-1978, known informally as Fortran 77. This report is a review of Fortran 8x and consists of a series of six articles. The first article gives a general overview of Fortran 8x. The next three articles give brief discussions of the array facilities; the enhanced numeric facilities; and user-defined data types, procedure interfaces, and the new program unit called a module. The fifth article provides a brief analysis of the controversial issues discussed by X3J3 (including both the accepted and rejected facilities for Fortran 8x). The sixth article gives a brief comparison with Ada. The report concludes with a summary giving information on how and where to express opinions of the draft proposed standard.

REFERENCES

• 1: Draft Proposed American National Standard for Fortran, Global Engineering Documents Incorporated, October 1987, 2625 Hickory St., Santa Ana, CA 92707; phone number --- 1-800-854-7179 or 1-714-540-9870; cost $50.
• 2: LWG Fortran Manual, Collaborative Technical Report FORT-82-1, Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, June 1982, prepared by Charles Wetherell.
• 3: Michael Metcalf , John Reid, FORTRAN 8x explained, Oxford University Press, Inc., New York, NY, 1987
• 4: Ada Programming Language, USA Military Standard, ANSI/MIL-STD-1815A, February 1983.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications

          Nouns: FORTRAN

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.0 General
          Subjects: Standards

  G. Mathematics of Computing

General Terms:
Languages, Theory