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Programming Announcements Technology

FORTRAN 2003 Accepted as Standard 59

Posted by CowboyNeal from the number-crunching dept.
GraWil writes "Despite the nay sayers citing its death in 1965, the FORTRAN standards committee has now released the final FORTRAN 2003 specification. In an announcement to the comp.lang.fortran group, Michael Metcalf annouced that 'Fortran 2003 has passed its ballot with flying colours: 20 yeses, 0 noes, 8 abstains.' Strictly speaking, the 2003 and past standards are not freely available but drafts can be found online. FORTRAN 2003 is an upwardly-compatible extension of the current standard, FORTRAN 95, adding and extending support for exception handling, object-oriented programming, and improved interoperability with the C language. In other FORTRAN news, the GNU FORTRAN 95 compiler has made amazing progress over the past year. Gfortran will be part of gcc-4.0 when released (probably in 2005)."
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FORTRAN 2003 Accepted as Standard More

FORTRAN 2003 Accepted as Standard

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  • Have they addressed any of the weirdnesses? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Friday September 17, 2004 @06:06AM (#10275195) Homepage Journal
    Three things bug me about F95, which I use every day
    1. No standardised/portable method for handling command line parameters.
    2. Undefined behaviour for short-cutting logical ors. e.g. the behaviour of
      if(flag.and.function(var)) then...
      is undefined if flag is false and function() has side effects.
    3. The things you *can't* use parameters for (like fixing lengths in format statements) without running fpp/cpp on the code first
    4. No standardised meanings for

      real(kind=8) x

      Does that mean an 8 byte real? Or a 8 bit real? It depends on the compiler... (and yes, I know the portable solution is

      real (kind=kind(0.0d0)) x

      and the such like, but *thats* really ugly, compared to

      double precision x.


    • I find Fortran (especially old fortran like 77) is most easily worked when you do the setup and application logic in C/C++. Once you've got the type conversions down (ie, when passing Fortran strings, their lenth is appended as an argument, or that array subscripts are reverse and start from 1), it's quite easy to call C from Fortran and Fortran from C.

      Since C is much more standard and cross platfrom, you can get that stuff out of the way and do the heavy lifting in Fortran. Data types, yes, those can b

    • I haven't done any Fortran-95 in a while, but I believe that most of this syntax is correct:

      Integer, Parameter :: KREL=Kind(0.0d0)
      Real (KREL) :: X=0.0_KREL

      Later on, if you want to go back and change to some other precision (single, quad??), just change the parameter statement. Also, note that if you want to use literal constants, just append "_KREL", as in "1.0_KREL".

    • 2. Undefined behaviour for short-cutting logical ors. e.g. the behaviour of
      if(flag.and.function(var)) then...
      is undefined if flag is false and function() has side effects.

      You should be shot for trying something like that. In any language. An optimising compiler is supposed to evaluate 'flag' first.

      If you want to pull a stunt like that, try
      c
      c *WARNING*: function has side-effects so we have to execute it!
      c
      funcres = function (var)
      if (flag .and. funcres) then

      • In any language. An optimising compiler is supposed to evaluate 'flag'

        But if flag is false should it evaluate function().

        The C standard quite clearly states that it

        if(a && func()) {block;}

        is equivalent to

        if(a) {
        if(func()) {
        block;
        }}

        Nothing is that clearly defined in Fortran

  • Deafening silence (Score:5, Funny)

    by bonniot ( 633930 ) on Friday September 17, 2004 @06:09AM (#10275204) Homepage Journal
    Halh an hour after Fortran 2003 was announced on slashdot, the silence is deafening. Have most people migrated to other languages? I often heard that the amount of legacy code will make fortran survive for a long time. Or is it just that the sets of fortran users and of slashdoters do not intersect?

    • Re:Deafening silence (Score:5, Funny)

      by kawika ( 87069 ) on Friday September 17, 2004 @08:27AM (#10275778)
      Sorry it took me a while to respond. I was down in the computer room re-punching my card decks to comply with the new Fortran 2003 standard.

      • Re:Deafening silence (Score:2, Interesting)

        by traveyes ( 262759 )
        You joke.... Seriously, where I work there's 2 people that still write in Fortran/66. No kidding.

        They don't use card-punchers, but they might as well.

        .
    • There is enough interest in Fortran to support about 10 Fortran 95 compiler vendors -- see http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Programming/Language s/Fortran/Compilers/ . You can see in the comp.lang.fortran newsgroup that people ARE using it to write new code, using the new features of Fortran 90 and 95. Fortran is still the best compiled language for numerical work -- compare its handling of arrays with that of C or C++.

  • What future programming languages will be (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Friday September 17, 2004 @06:19AM (#10275226) Journal
    Taking aside the idea of syntax for moment, this is a RT on 'what is a language' nothing to do with turin complete, OO or AOP or whatever.

    What we really care about: libraries. Being able to do things quickly, without fsking about.

    That is why php is successful, people can just run phpnuke/postnuke etc.

    Perl is also successful because of its roots and flexibility, and easy to get into, and you could just run slashdot on your site if needs be.

    What really helps these, is foundations. php/mysql, perl/whatdoesslashdotuse? People will write in anything if they see an easy way to get something done. Tutorials and support material.

    The point - except for people studying 'computer languages' (as someone woudl study the history of world languages) who will pick up fortran as an option for a new language?

    I am first to admit I do not know the dissadvantages or advantages of it. Are there any? or is it just syntax?

    Java is a language, but much more, it abstracts the whole idea of a language ( no it isn't correct to cite /nets multiple compilers here, no no really this is a different point) and makes it a process.

    So it isn't about the clean syntax OO language, but the process of programming. Through design and development and testing, it has all be rbought up with testing, this is true of almost all languages, but when I think of Java I have a view of all the testing frameworks, libraries and standards.

    To be honest, Fortran now is just a syntax specification, that says, take this line, and make that byte code. That doesn't do it for me.

    One mans syntax is another mans syntax error.

    Error on line 1: Insert ; to complete statement

    • Re:What future programming languages will be (Score:5, Informative)

      by TeknoHog ( 164938 ) on Friday September 17, 2004 @07:18AM (#10275372) Homepage Journal
      I am first to admit I do not know the dissadvantages or advantages of it. Are there any? or is it just syntax?

      Disclaimer: I have an M.Sci in physics with a slant towards computational physics. I'm most familiar with F90 but its advantages should apply to the later revisions as well.

      Fortran is a slightly higher-level language than C. It has lots of math capabilities built-in; particularly matrix types and operations meaning good potential for parallel processing. Decent compilers can produce multiprocessor and MMX/SSE code from Fortran, and probably the equivalent on non-x86 platforms. I'm not sure if you can do this in C portably.

      Fortran has a fairly simple overall syntax where newlines matter. I found it very easy to learn, having some experience with Python and C. In some ways the syntax is rather arcane but at least it's quite clear (compared to C or Perl at least IMHO).

      Fortran does have pointers, but they are unnecessary because of other memory handling methods (namespaces or 'modules'). Dynamic memory allocation is a bit quirky IMHO, but way simpler than in C.

      The language feels well suited for physicists. It's not necessarily good for general programming, but I'd happily use it for many speed-critical sections instead of C.

      One important reason for the persistence of Fortran is the number of libraries for computational sciences, for example LAPACK. They can be included in modern Fortran programs despite being written in F77. There have been a number of attempts to make a scripting front-end for these libraries; Matlab is one of them, even though its F77 roots are not very visible.

      The common complaints about Fortran are mostly true for F77 and older revisions. F77 is a truly horrible language, and it has none of the nice features that make F90+ good for scientific computing.

      • Dynamic memory allocation is a bit quirky IMHO, but way simpler than in C

        Quirky? I really like it.

        i) Declare a variable allocatable.
        ii) Allocate it, and check IFAIL
        iii) Deallocate it when you're done.
        iv) Profit!

        The real paradigm shift you need for a C programmer moving to fortran, is that nothing is passed by value and side effects are used so much. But the intent(in) and intent(out) directives are your friends for that sort of thing.

        Function overloading is pretty straightforward too, once you start u

    • Basically when you are doing heavy math problem such as nuclear simulations or atmospheric or whatever, fortan is nice. The syntax is fairly succinct, there is less memory management than in C and it's built in math and especially matrix abilities are second to none.

      It has lost it's usage as a general purpose language, as yes you're right in that, and most people will never need to pick it up. But for scientists Fortran is an attractive option especially if know how to interface it with C (and it's not

      • how to interface it with C (and it's not that hard), you can use the best of both languages.

        It is fairly easy, I just wish symbol underscoring and capitalization didn't cause so much trouble. A nice set of manditory linker flags to link libraries with different conventions would be nice :-)

    • You gave the answer. For scientific computing, Fortran is where the libraries and support tools are.

      You can think of it as being for scientific computing what php is for web development. Except, of course, that Fortran is far more dominating in the scientific computing field than PHP is for web development.

      I know, I write scientific computing in C++, and I must occationally consider if it wouldn't have been more cost efficient to use Fortran, where most of the relevant libraries, support tools and exper

  • GFORTRAN != G95 (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17, 2004 @07:19AM (#10275378)
    The article talks about GFORTRAN being released with the next GCC, but then links to G95 on sourceforge. From reading the gcc.gnu.org list trsffic, G95 was orginally on sourceforge, but then forked when its main developer wouldn't cooperate with anybody else, especially the GCC people. The fork was GFORTRAN, and it will be GFORTRAN, not the g95.sf.net project, which gets released.
    • I don't know about the politics of the unfortunate g95/gfortran split, but I can say that Andy Vaught, the force behind g95, works very hard at it, adding features (including a few from Fortran 2003) and fixing bugs at a fast pace. G95 compiles many large codes as well as my (smaller) codes. Binaries are available for 7 Unix/Linux platforms from http://www.g95.org .

  • Why not the front page? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why isn't this on the front page? Here I am, bustin' my ass writing Fortran code all day. I mean, the new spec is really important to me and my work. I've been waiting for the ability to natively handle command line arguments (i.e. without a STDIN/STOUT tricks) since moving from cards.
  • Has any used it on production numerical codes? Benchmarked it against NAG or Intel compilers? Any problems with incompatibility?

  • What sectors are people using this in? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SLiK812 ( 518195 ) on Friday September 17, 2004 @09:23AM (#10276238)
    When I was a young lad in college (all of 10 years ago), I had to learn Fortran for one of my Chem Eng classes. We were learning Fortran77, mostly cause my profressor didn't think we would need it in the future, and didn't want us to be concerned with some of the new structures in more current versions.

    The Aero's also had to learn it (I know cause I taught it to them, since their prof sucked). So what sectors of industry are people working in with Fortran? Is it still just the Chemical and Aeronautical fields, are other places (where a different language might be more beneficial, say) still using it, cause no one wanted to convert systems?

    • Re:What sectors are people using this in? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by j_cavera ( 758777 ) on Friday September 17, 2004 @11:31AM (#10277502)
      The nuclear engineering communitiy is (still) standardized on F77. The reasons: 1) many great neutronics codes were written in the 60's (often for weapons research) using F77 and are still valuable today and 2) the NRC has some strange requirements concerning foward and backward compatability - almost anything from a DEC PDP-3 to a new G5 iMac can compile F77 code. Maybe someday they'll let us use F95...
    • Airlines.

      NWA for example.
      There used to be two competing mainframe packages for airlines, one was essentially written in Fortran. I don't know the other one and have fogotten it's name.
      afaik, people are now migrating away from the Fortran one towards Unix systems (?), but they ain't got thar yet. (it is not a conversion job, it is a complete rewrite)

  • Stop...the...nightmare (Score:3, Funny)

    by b-baggins ( 610215 ) on Friday September 17, 2004 @11:27AM (#10277466) Journal
    Twisted visions of late nights hunched over the green glow of my IBM XT sweating through trying to write a Fortran 77 program to data crunch my analytical Chem class lab reports are running through my brain like nails on a blackboard.
    • OMG

      I have the same nightmares. I was an Aero and I remember having to model how heat dissipates from different fin shapes in color! I also remember praying that the program will finish running on my IBM PS2 before class started. I hated Fortran so much that it turned me off from computers for years and I have always loved them since I got my first VIC 20 when I was 9. I'm just writing about it and I need a towel for my cold sweat and half a bottle of Advil for my migraine!

  • Holding out. (Score:2, Funny)

    by base3 ( 539820 )
    I'm waiting for FORTRAN XP.

  • Fortran lives in scientific research. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CharAznable ( 702598 ) on Friday September 17, 2004 @08:08PM (#10282021)
    Back in college, a couple of years ago, I worked as a research assitant for an astronomer. He made me learn Fortran77, and then Fortran 90. F77 is horribly stiff, no different from punching stuff into a card. But F90 was really great, easy, straight forward syntax, and very, very fast. My job was basically working with 15 year old f77 code and writing new f90 code used to calculate IR emissions from protoplanetary disks around stars. I leared a lot and made me a better programmer, I think.
  • I've been coding a lot of vector, matrix, tensor stuff for hydrodynamic research. F90 is friendly for that.
    For example you can move matrix blocks in one statement, or set them all to zero at once. It's almost like using a math package but fast.


    This online manual is teh goodness:
    http://www.liv.ac.uk/HPC/HTMLF90Course/HTMLF90Cour seSlides.html [liv.ac.uk]

    If they exist I want to buy a Fortran related T-Shirt. Also one about TI-994A's but not the ones in cafepress.

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