Fortran

The article by Appleyard [1] on comparing Fortran compilers discusses diagnostic capabilities of compilers and how they can be used to detect different possible errors.

The most recent Fortran 95 compiler from NAG has an option to allow all unsaved local real and complex variables and INTENT(OUT) dummy arguments to be initialized to signalling NaN, which should aid in catching errors caused by the use of uninitialized variables - the related problem of not declared variables has already been solved in Fortran 90 with the IMPLICIT NONE statement. Similar features are often available in other systems.

• Michel Olagnon's Fortran 90 List

Since Fortran continues to be the primary language for numerical scientific programming, some existing tools are discussed below.

Interesting tools for Fortran:

• NAGWare Fortran Tools could be used in a range of ways, for Quality Assurance, Standardization, Enforcing coding standards, Porting to new platforms, and for Converting from fixed format Fortran 77 to free format Fortran 95.
  http://www.nag.co.uk/nagware/Nq.asp
• "Cleanscape FortranLint", a source code analyzer for Fortran 77/90/95.
  http://www.cleanscape.net/
• FTNCHECK by Robert Moniot and provided free. It detects unused, undeclared, and uninitialized variables.
  http://www.netlib.org/fortran/ftnchek.tgz
• FOR_STRUCT restructures Fortran into clean, maintainable code.
  http://www.cobalt-blue.com
• plusFORT contains tools for code restructuring, global static analysis, and dynamic analysis, as well as coverage analysis of the testing process.
  http://www.polyhedron.co.uk/pf/plusfort.html
• The Fortran Company
  http://www.fortran.com/fortran/
• Mathematical software developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
  http://www.mathalacarte.com/

Conversion from Fortran 77 to Fortran 90/95:

• SPAG - Fortran Code Restructuring

1. John Appleyard, Comparing Fortran Compilers, Fortran Forum, Volume 20, Number 1 (April 2001), pp. 6 - 10. See also the Fortran pages of
http://www.polyhedron.com