Synopsis
Fortran is currently the world's most powerful numeric language and F is a subset of this. F is a programming language which is nearly as powerful as its parent language, containing the modern language features of Fortran, yet smaller and easier to use, debug and teach than Fortran. As with his previous Fortran books, Wilhelm Gehrke has provided a clear and comprehensive guide to the F language in this book which will be welcomed by practitioners and students alike. The F Language Guide will serve as a language reference manual for the novice as well as for the experienced programmer, as teaching material for courses in F programming, and in programming methodology. The guide concentrates on the description of the language as a programmers' tool. A representation of the F Syntax using railroad diagrams will be available on the Springer server at //www.springer.co.uk/
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From Preface: Fortran has been and will be the most important programming language for the development of engineering and scientific applications. The current standard of Fortran is Fortran 90 but its successor Fortran 95 will be accepted as international standard still in 1997. F is a subset of the Fortran programming language defined by Fortran 90. With very few exceptions, F is also a subset of Fortran 95. Since the "deleted language features" of Fortran 95 are not included in the F language, an F program is a Fortran 90 standard conforming program and also a Fortran 95 standard conforming program. With other words: an F conforming Fortran program is both a Fortran 90 conforming Fortran program and a Fortran 95 conforming Fortran program. The subset of Fortran selected for the F language defines a programming language which is nearly as powerful as its parent language, which contains the modern language features of Fortran, which is significantly smaller than Fortran, which does not contain those Fortran language features that are difficult to use,to debug, and to teach, which does not contain many of the redundant language elements of Fortran, and which enforces methodical programming.
The F language does not support:
o statement labels. As a consequence, an F program cannot have or use, for instance, GOTO, arithmetic IF, alternate return, labeled do-termination statement, CONTINUE.
o storage units and storage sequences. As a consequence, an F program cannot have or use, for instance, EQUIVALENCE, COMMON, ENTRY, SEQUENCE, sequence type, sequence (argument) association.
o decremental features of Fortran 90 and Fortran 95. As a consequence, an F program cannot have or use, statement function, shared DO termination, double precision DO variable, fixed source form.
o equivalent or redundant language elements. As a consequence, an F program cannot have or use, for instance, INCLUDE, DATA, BLOCK DATA, or internal subprograms.
o rarly used language elements such as NAMELIST i/o or DO WHILE.
An F program requires that:
o all named data objects be declared explicitly,
o attributes for data objects be specified in the type declaration statement,
o user-defined F subprograms be module subprograms,
o module entities have an explicitly specified accessibility attribute,
o F functions have (nearly) no side-effects,
o user-defined names are different from any reserved name,
o the source text (except character literal constants and certain user-defined names) is written in lower case.
A more detailed overview of the differences between Fortran 90 and F is given in appendix D.
"The F Language Guide" is a comprehensible description of the complete F programming language as it is defined in "BNF Syntax of the F Programming Language". It is similar in style and structure to my "Fortran 90 Language Guide" and is based on a revised version of that book which also was the starting text for my "Fortran 95 Language Guide".
"The F Language Guide" is intended to serve as a language reference manual for the novice as well as for the experienced programmer, as teaching material for courses in F programming, and in programming methodology. The guide concentrates on the description of the language as a programmers' tool and abstains from personal, historical, and philosophical comments and interpretations.
Though the list of restrictions seems long, F retains the modern features of Fortran. Therefore, "The F Language Guide" can also be used for courses in Fortran programming. And the experienced programmer can use it during the development of new Fortran software.
The formal meta language used within this guide supports the precise description of single language features. Note that it is not the formal meta language used in the "BNF Syntax of the F Programming Language". Appendix E of this guide contains a representation of the formal syntax of the F language in rail-road form.
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