Fortran Wiki
Guide Index View

Wiki Entries applied to a Fortran Guide

Items on the Fortran Wiki are not directed towards comprising a single document describing Fortran. Given that, organizing a subset of the local entries according to an index outlining a hypothetical book for teaching Fortran provides

• logical groupings of materials
• a perspective on what common topics are not yet covered
• a structure to investigate using AI to generate a subject guide

Writing missing sections and reorganizing this index is encouraged. In addition, it is proposed AI be leveraged to initially create many of the missing topics, which is an interesting exercise in itself.

AI may ultimately replace the need for User manuals by producing personalized responses to queries or by writing code itself, but that time is not fully yet.

Feel free to pick a missing topic and create pertinent files with or without AI; as well as improve the local entries.

Part I – Introduction and Foundations

Chapter 1: Why Fortran Matters

• History and evolution of Fortran
  • Fortran History
• Fortran’s role in scientific and high-performance computing
• Fortran vs. other scientific languages (C, Matlab, S/R, Matlab/Octave, Python, Julia, Rust, D, …)
• Overview of modern Fortran standards (circa 1990–2023)
  • Standards
  • J3
  • WG5

Chapter 2: Getting Started

• Installing a Fortran compiler (GFortran, Intel, LLVM Flang)

• Testing the compiler and run-time properties

  • Compilers
  • Compiler Support for Modern Fortran

• Writing and compiling your first Fortran program

  • hello
  • compiling “hello”
  • Common compiler options and error messages

• Program structure and syntax basics

  • Free form layout
  • Fixed form layout
  • Arithmetic
  • Boolean expressions and values
  • [Continuation linesl(Continuation+lines)]
  • control constructs
  • Internal procedures
  • implicit none
  • Keywords
  • Standard Constantsso_fortran_env)
  • Initializing values

Chapter 3: Variables, Types, and Expressions

• Intrinsic data types (integer, real, complex, logical, character)
  • Intrinsic types
• iso_varying_string
• Kind parameters and precision
  • Real precision
  • Floating point arithmetic
• Constants and parameters
  • literal and constant
• Operators and expressions
• IEEE standard conformance
  • IEEE arithmetic
  • ieee arithmetic

Part II – Core Programming Concepts

Chapter 4: Control Flow

• Conditional statements (if, select case)
• Loops (do, do concurrent)
• Exit and cycle statements
• Best practices for readable control flow
• Select Case
• Error handling
• short-circuiting

Chapter 5: Arrays and Array Operations

• Declaring and allocating arrays
  • Dynamic memory allocation
  • Multiple allocation - smart pointer
• Array slicing and intrinsic operations
• Whole-array expressions
• Performance implications of array usage
• array constructors

Chapter 6: Input and Output

• Formatted and unformatted I/O
• Reading and writing files
  • Formatted Sequential I/O
    • Edit descriptors
  • Unformatted Sequential I/O
  • Stream I/O
  • Direct Acess I/O
  • Writing to stderr
  • Scratch Files
  • Namelists
    • namelist_prompter
    • get_namelist
• Error handling in I/O
• Unicode
• Special I/O
  • Raw Key Capture
  • Calling C readline(3)

Chapter 7: Further interaction with the System Environment

• Environment variables
  • Environment Variables
• Command Line arguments
  • arguments
• Command Line parsing
  • Command-line arguments

Part III – Modular and Structured Programming

Chapter 8: Procedures

• proceduress. subroutines)
• Argument passing and intent
• Recursion and elemental procedures
  • recursion
  • elemental
• Interfaces and explicit typing
• Fortran intrinsic procedures reference?(Intrinsic+procedures.markdownMML)

Chapter 9: Modules and Code Organization

• Creating and using modules

  • Module

  • Compiler .MOD files

  • Compiling and linking modules

  • use_test

  • Submodules

  • abstract interface

• Encapsulation and visibility

• Building multi-file projects

  • Build tools
  • Build dynamic-link libraries (DLLs)
  • Build static libraries

• Reusability and libraries

Chapter 10: Derived Types and Object-Oriented Features

• Defining derived types
• Type-bound procedures
• Inheritance and polymorphism
• When and when not to use OOP in Fortran
  • OOP discussion
  • About Fortran evolution+and+OOP
• Design Patterns
• Design patterns
• More on Object-Oriented Programming
  • Object oriented programming
  • Object oriented programming2

Chapter 11: Creating Data Structures

• Data structures
• hash table example
• Linked list
• gen_list

Part IV – Modern Fortran and Performance

Chapter 12: Memory Management

• Allocatable arrays and pointers

  • Pointers
  • Procedure pointers
  • pointer_example

• Automatic vs. dynamic memory

  • Dynamic memory allocation
  • Dynamic Memory Reallocation

• Common memory errors and debugging tips

• Using transfer(3) in lieu of a void pointer

Chapter 13: Parallelism and Performance

• Parallelization
• do concurrent and SIMD
• Coarrays for parallel programming
  • Coarrays
  • Parallel Programming with Co-Arrays
• Message Passing with OpenMP and MPI
  • OpenMP
  • Using OpenMP - Portable Shared Memory Parallel Programming
  • Using OpenMP - Portable Shared Memory Parallel Programming
  • Portable Parallel Programming with the Message Passing Interface
  • OpenCL?(Focal)
• POSIX Threads
• Fork

Chapter 14: Performance

• Performance tuning and profiling -Timing * Timing * timer

Chapter 15: Interfacing with Other Languages

• Interoperability
• C interoperability
  • C interoperability
  • iso_c_binding
  • example calling C from Fortran
  • Generating C Interfaces
  • c_interface_module
  • regex_module
• C++ interoperability
  • Cpp interoperability
• Csharp interoperability
  • CSharp Interoperability
• Calling Fortran from Python
  • Python
• Mixed-language projects
• Julia interoperability
  • Julia

Part V – Practical Applications

Chapter 16: Numerical Methods in Fortran

• Solving linear systems
• Numerical integration and differentiation
• Random numbers and Monte Carlo methods
  • kiss64

Chapter 17: Scientific and Engineering Case Studies

• Physics simulation example
• Climate or fluid modeling example
• Data analysis workflows

Chapter 18: Working with Legacy Fortran Code

• Understanding Fortran 77 code
• Modernizing old programs
  • Modernizing Old Fortran
• Common pitfalls and refactoring strategies

Part VI – Best Practices and the Future

Chapter 19: Debugging, Testing, and Documentation

• Debugging tools and compiler flags
  • Debugging tools
• Unit testing frameworks for Fortran
  • Mutation testing frameworks
  • Unit testing frameworks
  • Fortran Unit Test
  • UnitTest
• Coverage reports on test suites
• Writing maintainable documentation

Chapter 20: Additional tools

• fpm – Fortran package manager
• git, github, gitlab, hg, …
• CD/CI testing
• Tools

Chapter 21: Coding Standards and Style

• Naming conventions
  • Source conventions
• Code formatting
  • Style
• Writing readable and maintainable Fortran

Chapter 22: Sub-Topics

• STEM code repositories and resources
  • Netlib
  • CERNLIB
  • github, gitlab,…
  • fortran.lang
• preprocessors
  • Include files
  • C preprocessor
  • Predefined preprocessor macros
  • Preprocessors
• Operator overloading –opover - extend_dble
• Converting between strings and other types
• Sorting
  • qsort_inline
• Date and Time
  • Time In Words
  • fdate
• Sleep
• POSIX interfaces
  • Posix90 library
• graphics
  • writegif
  • read_gif
  • Gnuplot interfaces
• Threads
• Editors and IDEs
  • Source code editors
• Code Generation?
  • AI as used for code generation, discovery, documentation and testing
  • Code generation
• Inter-Process Communication
• Numerical Linear Algebra
  • BLAS
  • LAPACK
• GUI and TUI User Interfaces and terminal display control
  • GUI Development
  • ANSI Escape Sequences
    • ansi_colors
  • ncurses
• STEM File exchange formats
  • HDF5
  • netCDF
  • CSV, TOML, YAML, JSON, …
  • XML
• Web Applications
  • CGI
• Embeddable Languages
  • Lua
  • Tcl/Tk
• software licenses
  • Choosing a license
  • How licenses are indicated in the code
  • Commonly used licenses
    • Public domain
    • BSD license
    • MIT license
    • GNU Free+Documentation+License
    • GPL license

Chapter 23: The Future of Fortran

• Upcoming standards and features
• Proposals?
• Community and open-source ecosystem
• Learning resources and next steps

Appendices

• B: Common compiler options
• C: Fortran vs. C/Python syntax comparison
• D: Sample projects and exercises
  • Code
• E: FAQ
  • FAQ
• F: External resources
  • Applications
  • Articles
  • Blogs
  • Books
  • Email lists
  • Tutorials
  • Libraries
  • Software repositories

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