Fortran 95 for Fortran 77 Users

Abstract

For 50 years Fortran has been a computer language used mainly by engineers and scientists (but by few computer scientists), mainly for numerical work. Five versions were standardised and are commonly referred to as f66, f77, f90, f95 and f2003 to indicate the year. F95 has superseded f90, and no f2003 compilers exist yet. These notes concentrate on f77 and f95.

They are written to show f77 users a number of the f95 features that I found so useful that I gave up f77 except when writing a program for someone with no f95 compiler.

Some new features make programming easier, some allow the machine to detect bugs that f77 compilers cannot, and some make programs easier to read.