Overview: Language Reference

This document contains the complete description of the Intel® Fortran programming language and the Intel® Visual Fortran Compiler (hereafter referred to as Intel Visual Fortran), which includes Fortran 95, Fortran 90, and some Fortran 2003 language features. It contains information on language syntax and semantics, on adherence to various Fortran standards, and on extensions to those standards.

This manual is intended for experienced applications programmers who have a basic understanding of Fortran concepts and the Fortran 95/90 language.

Some familiarity with your operating system is helpful. This manual is not a Fortran or programming tutorial.

This manual contains the full content of both the Language Reference and Libraries Reference PDF files, which are part of the compiler documentation. However, the library routines described in the Libraries Reference PDF file are described within the A to Z Reference.

This document covers the following topics:

• Conformance, Compatibility, and Fortran 2003 Features
  This topic describes conformance with language standards, compatibility with other Fortran languages, and it contains a summary of Fortran 2003 features.
• Program Structure, Characters, and Source Forms
  This topic describes program structure, the Fortran 95/90 character set, and source forms.
• Data Types, Constants, and Variables
  This topic describes language standards, language compatibility, and Fortran 95/90 features.
• Expressions and Assignment Statements
  This topic describes Fortran expressions and assignment statements, which are used to define or redefine variables.
• Specification Statements
  This topic describes specification statements, which are used to declare the attributes of data objects.
• Dynamic Allocation
  This topic describes statements used in dynamic allocation: ALLOCATE, DEALLOCATE, and NULLIFY.
• Execution Control
  This topic describes constructs and statements that can transfer control within a program.
• Program Units and Procedures
  This topic describes program units (including modules), subroutines and functions, and procedure interfaces.
• Intrinsic Procedures
  This topic describes argument keywords used in intrinsic procedures and provides an overview of intrinsic procedures.
• Data Transfer I/O Statements
  This topic describes data transfer input/output (I/O) statements.
• I/O Formatting
  This topic describes the rules for I/O formatting.
• File Operation I/O Statements
  This topic describes auxiliary I/O statements you can use to perform file operations.
• Compilation Control Statements
  This topic describes compilation control statements: INCLUDE and OPTIONS.
• Directive Enhanced Compilation
  This topic describes general and parallel compiler directives.
• Scope and Association
  This topic describes scope, which refers to the area in which a name is recognized, and association, which is the language concept that allows different names to refer to the same entity in a particular region of a program.
• Deleted and Obsolescent Language Features
  This topic describes deleted features in Fortran 95 and obsolescent language features in Fortran 95 and Fortran 90.
• Additional Language Features
  This topic describes some statements and language features supported for programs written in older versions of Fortran.
• Additional Character Sets
  This topic describes the additional character sets available on Windows*, Linux*, and Mac OS* systems.
• Data Representation Models
  This topic describes data representation models for numeric intrinsic functions.
• Run-Time Library Routines
  This topic summarizes the many run-time library routines.
• Summary of Language Extensions
  This topic summarizes Intel Fortran extensions to the Fortran 95 Standard.
• A to Z Reference
  This topic contains language summary tables and describes descriptions of all Intel® Visual Fortran statements, intrinsics, directives, and module library routines, which are listed in alphabetical order.
• Glossary
  This topic contains abbreviated definitions of some commonly used terms in this manual.

For details on the features of the compilers, see your guide to Building Applications. For details on how to improve the run-time performance of Fortran programs, see your guide to Optimizing Applications. For details on floating-point support, see your guide to Floating-point Operations. For details on compiler options, see your Compiler Options reference.

For more information on Fortran 2003 features in this release, see Fortran 2003 Features.