Arrays

Abstract

The array has always played a central role in Fortran programming, and in recognition of this, the Fortran 90 standard supports many new features to facilitate array handling. Traditionally, in Fortran expressions like a + 3 * SQRT (b), a and b have been restricted to taking on scalar values, but in Fortran 90, a and b may be arrays in such an expression, in which case the expression evaluates to an array of values. In this connection, Fortran 90 permits every element of an array to be given a value using a single statement. For example, if a and b are arrays that have previously been given values, then all the elements of array c may be given values using an assignment statement such as

$$ {\text{c}} = {\text{a}} + 3{\text{ }} * {\text{ SQRT (b) ! a, b, c are arrays}}. $$