FORTRAN Reference Manual
Language Elements
FORTRAN Reference Manual—528615-001
2-15
Dimensioning an Array
bound. The number of elements in each dimension is one greater than the difference 
between the upper and lower bounds.
The following statement declares and dimensions the array DICTIONARY, a one 
dimensional character array. The first element is DICTIONARY(1) and the last element 
is DICTIONARY(100). Each of the 100 elements of DICTIONARY consists of 10 
characters.
CHARACTER * 10 dictionary (100)
The following statement declares and dimensions the array CUSTOMERS. FORTRAN 
determines the array type implicitly as real. The array has seven dimensions—the 
maximum for a FORTRAN array:
DIMENSION customers (31, 5, 24, 52, 2, 1, 165)
Table 2-3 shows the organization of the array declared by the statement: 
DIMENSION ta (6,6)
Table 2-4 shows the organization of the array declared by the statement:
DIMENSION tb (-3:2,-2:3)
Note that TA and TB are exactly the same size. TA, however, is based at 1,1 whereas 
TB is based at -3,2.
Table 2-3. Array Based at One
ta(1,1) ta(1,2) ta(1,3) ta(1,4) ta(1,5) ta(1,6)
ta(2,1) ta(2,2) ta(2,3) ta(2,4) ta(2,5) ta(2,6)
ta(3,1) ta(3,2) ta(3,3) ta(3,4) ta(3,5) ta(3,6)
ta(4,1) ta(4,2) ta(4,3) ta(4,4) ta(4,5) ta(4,6)
ta(5,1) ta(5,2) ta(5,3) ta(5,4) ta(5,5) ta(5,6)
ta(6,1) ta(6,2) ta(6,3) ta(6,4) ta(6,5) ta(6,6)
Table 2-4. Array With Negative Subscripts
tb(-3,-2) tb(-3,-1) tb(-3,0) tb(-3,1) tb(-3,2) tb(-3,3)
tb(-2,-2) tb(-2,-1) tb(-2,0) tb(-2,1) tb(-2,2) tb(-2,3)
tb(-1,-2) tb(-1,-1) tb(-1,0) tb(-1,1) tb(-1,2) tb(-1,3)
tb(0,-2) tb(0,-1) tb(0,0) tb(0,1) tb(0,2) tb(0,3)
tb(1,-2) tb(1,-1) tb(1,0)\ tb(1,1) tb(1,2) tb(1,3)
tb(2,-2) tb(2,-1) tb(2,0) tb(2,1) tb(2,2) tb(2,3)










