F90 Model : Introduction

The Fortran 90 standard was drafted and finalized after much dissension and debate. The previous standards were more evolutionary and, for the most part, standardized existing practice. However, the Fortran 90 standard committees (ANSI X3J3 & ISO WG5) followed a more innovative route to keep Fortran viable into the future. You may be violently opposed to this approach; but, be that as it may, Fortran 90 exists and does offer many features that make the task of crafting code easier and more enjoyable.

One of the decisions the committees made was to make Fortran 77 a subset of Fortran 90, thus allowing the existing Fortran 77 code base to port directly. This has made Fortran 90 a hermaphroditic monster. You can either look at it as Fortran 77 being a wart on Fortran 90, or Fortran 90 as a wart on Fortran 77.

For this presentation, we'll confine ourselves to that part of Fortran 90 that is unique.

Note: This subset of Fortran 90 has been made into a proprietary language named F^tm largely created by Walter Brainerd(?) and available at http://www.imagine1.com/imagine1/

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