Content from Introduction

Last updated on 2024-11-15 | Edit this page

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Overview

Questions

  • What is Fortran?

Objectives

  • Understand some of Fortrans colourful history

Introduction

A very simple program might be:

FORTRAN 

program example1

  ! An example program prints "Hello World" to the screen

  print * , "Hello World"

end program example1

Formally, a Fortran program consists of one or more lines made up of Fortran statements. Line breaks are significant (e.g., there are no semi-colons ; required here).

Comments are introduced with an exclamation mark !, and may trail other statements.

The program statement is roughly doing the equivalent job of main() in C/C++. However, note there is not (and must not be) a return statement.

Compiling your first program

Check now you can compile and run the first example program example1.f90.

Using ftn:

$ something something something

Formal description 

  [ program [program-name] ]
     [ specification-part ]
     [ exectuable-part ]
  [ contains
     internal-subprogram-part ]
  end [program-name]

Optional components are represented with square brackets [...]. It follows that the shortest standard-conforming program will be (see example2.f90):

FORTRAN 

end

If the program-name is present, it must be at both the beginning and the end, and must be the same in both places.

We will return to the contains statement in the context of modules.

In general

FORTRAN 

  print format [ , output-item-list ]

where the format is a format specifier (discussed later) and the output-item-list is a comma-separated list of values/variables to be printed to the standard output.

If the format is a * (a so-called free-format) the implementation is allowed to apply a default format for a given type of item.

Alternative

Consider the following program (available as example3.f90):

FORTRAN 

program example3

  use iso_fortran_env, only : output_unit

  write (output_unit, *) "Hello ", "world"

end program example3

This example shows a more general way to provide some output. Here we are also going to employ the use statement to import a symbol from the (intrinsic) module iso_fortran_env. The symbol is output_unit which identifies the default standard output (cf. stdout).

use statement

Formally,

FORTRAN 

  use [[ , module-nature] ::] module-name [ , only : [only-list]]

If module-nature is present, it must be either intrinsic or non_intrinsic. The implementation must provide certain intrinsic modules such iso_fortran_env.

There is no formal namespace mechanism in Fortran (cf. C++), so restrictions on which symbols are visible can be made via an optional only-list. If there is no only-list then all the public symbols from module-name will be visible.

write statement

Formally,

FORTRAN 

  write (io-control-spec-list) [output-item-list]

where the output-item-list is a comma separated list of items to be output. The io-control-spec-list has a large number of potential arguments (again comma separated). For formatted output, these must include at least a unit number and a format:

FORTRAN 

  write ([unit = ] io-unit, [fmt = ] format) [output-item-list]

where the io-unit is a valid integer unit number, and the format is a format-specifier (as for print).

Examples are

FORTRAN 

  write (unit = output_unit, fmt = *)
  write (output_unit, *)
  write (*, *)

C programmers looking for a new-line like symbol will notice that none has appeared so far. The default situation is that both print and write generate a new-line automatically. The * symbol in the context of io-unit is a default output unit (usually the screen).

We will return to the write statement and format-specifiers in more detail in the context of i/o to external files.

Some comments on style

Modern Fortran is not case sensitive. Older versions required capitals, a style which has persisted to the present day in some places. So you may see things such as

FORTRAN 

PROGRAM example1

  PRINT *, "Hello World"

END PROGRAM example1

As modern etiquette tends to regard capitals as shouting, this can cause some strain. In addition, as the compiler will accept mixed case, an additional tool would be required to enforce style (if enforcement was wanted).

This course therefore prefers an all lower-case style.

Writing your first program

Write a program which prints out the actual values of the symbols output_unit, error_unit, and input_unit (all from iso_fortran_env) to the screen.

If you haven’t used the only clause in your use iso_fortran_env, add it now. What happens to the results if you miss out one of the symbols referenced from the only clause? This behaviour will be explained in the following section.

A version of this program is available as exercise1.f90.

Key Points

  • A Fortran program is made up of one or more statements which are separated by line breaks
  • Comments are declared with an ! and may trail other statements