CSA CAN/CSA-ISO/IEC 1539-2:02

Abstract

<strong>Introduction</strong> <br>This part of ISO/IEC 1539 has been prepared by ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5, the technical working group for the Fortran language. This part of ISO/IEC 1539 is an auxiliary standard to ISO/IEC 1539-1 : 1997, which defines the latest revision of the Fortran language, and is the first part of the multipart Fortran family of standards; this part of ISO/IEC 1539 is the second part. The revised language defined by ISO/IEC 1539-1 : 1997 is informally known as Fortran 95. <br>This part of ISO/IEC 1539 defines the interface and semantics for a module that provides facilities for the manipulation of character strings of arbitrary and dynamically variable length. Annex A refers to a possible implementation, in Fortran 95, of a module that conforms to this part of ISO/IEC 1539. It should be noted, however, that this is purely for purposes of demonstrating the feasibility and portability of this standard. The actual code is not intended in any way to prescribe the method of implementation, nor is there any implication that this is in any way an optimal portable implementation. The module is merely a fairly straightforward demonstration that a portable implementation is possible. <br>This standard is a development from a previous version known as ISO/IEC 1539-2: 1994 that takes account of the improvements introduced in Fortran 95. The most significant improvements in Fortran 95 for the present standard were the introduction of pure and elemental procedures. Since pure and elemental functions can be used in specification expressions, their introduction in this standard enhances the usability of the standard for the end user. The ability to define many of the functions specified in this standard to be elemental improves the compatibility of these functions with similar intrinsic functions defined by the main standard. <br>The improvements in type initialization provided in Fortran 95 have also enabled the sample implementation referred to in Annex A to be written in such a way that significant leakage of memory is less likely to occur.