HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
Chapter 1 Introduction to HP FORTRAN 77 The FORTRAN language was the first high level computer language to receive wide acceptance for application programming in the scientific community. First implemented in 1957, FORTRAN evolved through many changes and extensions, until in 1966 the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) published a "Standard FORTRAN" (X3.9-1966). This standard provided the basic structure of most FORTRAN compilers for many years. Many compilers extended the standard. To further define the FORTRAN standard to include many of the extensions, ANSI updated the standard in 1977. The document describing this new standard, American National Standard Programming Language FORTRAN, ANSI X3.9-1978 was published in 1978. Because most of the work on the language was completed in 1977, this standard FORTRAN is often called FORTRAN 77. In this manual, the ANSI standard is referred to as "the ANSI 77 standard." HP FORTRAN 77 is based on the ANSI 77 standard. It has many extensions to provide a more structured approach to program development and more flexibility in computing for scientific applications. Wherever such an extension is described, it is specifically referred to as "an extension to the ANSI 77 standard." As part of its extensions, FORTRAN 77 fully implements those extensions described in the Department of Defense publication Military Standard FORTRAN, DOD Supplement to American National Standard X3.9-1978, MIL-STD-1753. Wherever such an extension is described, it is specifically referred to as "MIL-STD-1753 standard extension to the ANSI 77 standard."
NOTE In the rest of this manual, the term "FORTRAN" specifically refers to "HP FORTRAN 77".