Fortran
| Fortran | |
|---|---|
| Paradigm | Multi-paradigm: structured, imperative (procedural, object-oriented), generic, array |
| Designed by | John Backus |
| Developer | John Backus and IBM |
| First appeared | 1957 |
| Stable release | Fortran 2023 (ISO/IEC 1539:2023)
/ November 17, 2023 |
| Typing discipline | strong, static, manifest |
| Filename extensions | .f90, .f, .for |
| Website | fortran-lang |
| Major implementations | |
| Absoft, Cray, GFortran, G95, IBM XL Fortran, Intel, Hitachi, Lahey/Fujitsu, Numerical Algorithms Group, Open Watcom, PathScale, PGI, Silverfrost, Oracle Solaris Studio, VAX/DEC/VSI, others | |
| Influenced by | |
| Speedcoding | |
| Influenced | |
| ALGOL 58, BASIC, C, Chapel, CMS-2, DOPE, Fortress, MATLAB, PL/I, PACT I, MUMPS, IDL, Ratfor, SAKO | |
| |
| This article is part of a series on the Fortran programming language |
Fortran (/ˈfɔːrtræn/; formerly FORTRAN) is a third-generation, compiled, imperative programming language designed for numeric computation and scientific computing.
Fortran was originally developed by IBM with a reference manual being released in 1956; however, the first compilers only began to produce accurate code two years later. Fortran computer programs have been written to support scientific and engineering applications, such as numerical weather prediction, finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics, plasma physics, geophysics, computational physics, crystallography and computational chemistry. It is a popular language for high-performance computing and is used for programs that benchmark and rank the world's fastest supercomputers.
Fortran has evolved through numerous versions and dialects. In 1966, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) developed a standard for Fortran to limit proliferation of compilers using slightly different syntax. Successive versions have added support for a character data type, structured programming (Fortran 77), array programming, modular programming, generic programming (Fortran 90), parallel computing (Fortran 95), object-oriented programming (Fortran 2003), and concurrent programming (Fortran 2008).