FORTRAN Reference Manual

FORTRAN Reference Manual—528615-001
2-1
2 Language Elements
Topics covered in this section include:
The FORTRAN Character Set
The FORTRAN character set, shown in Table 2-1 on page 2-2, consists of 26 letters,
10 digits, and 19 special characters. These characters are the only acceptable
characters in the text of a FORTRAN statement, although you can use any character in
the ASCII character set in character constants, literals, comment lines, and Hollerith
field descriptors. The FORTRAN collating sequence follows the order of the ASCII
character set, shown in Appendix A, ASCII Character Set.
The FORTRAN compiler ignores case except in character constants. The following two
statements are identical in FORTRAN:
PROGRAM random number generator
PROGRAM RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR
To help you distinguish keywords from symbols in this manual, keywords are shown in
uppercase characters, and symbolic names are shown in lowercase characters.
Topic Page
The FORTRAN Character Set
2-1
Program Line Format 2-2
Symbolic Names 2-6
Data Types 2-7
Constants 2-11
Variables 2-14
Arrays 2-14
Substrings 2-19
Records 2-20