CSC 272 - Software II: Principles of Programming Languages

DR. R. M. Siegfried

The FORTRAN Programming Language

FORTRAN is the first high-level language that saw commercial usage. It was developed by John Backus et. al. at IBM in 1957 and was updated several times, most recently in 1966, 1977 and 1990.

FORTRAN's syntax and structure shows its age. It is line -oriented due to its original means of input being punch cards. It requires backtracking in scanning its DO statements because its syntax predates the use of Backus-Naur form.

It remains somewhat popular because of the huge amount of code written in it and its great abilities in scientific programming, which include its easy ability to format output, its native complex data type and large library of built-in functions. You will find below links to three examples which show you how to code basic constructs in FORTRAN:

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