HP Fortran Programmer's Reference (September 2007)

Glossary 671
Glossary
A
actual argument A value, variable, or
procedure that is passed by a call to a
procedure (function or subroutine). The
actual argument appears in the source of the
calling procedure. See also dummy
argument.
adjustable array A dummy argument
that is an array having at least one
nonconstant dimension.
allocatable array A named array with the
ALLOCATABLE attribute whose rank is
specified at compile time, but whose bounds
are determined at run time. Storage for the
array must be explicitly allocated before the
array may be referenced.
archive library A library of routines that
can be linked to an executable program at
link-time. See also shared library.
argument (1) A variable, declared in the
argument list of a procedure or ENTRY
statement, that receives a value when the
procedure is called (a dummy argument).
(2) The variable, expression, or procedure
that is passed by a call to a procedure (an
actual argument).
argument association The correspondence
between an actual argument and a
dummy argument during execution of a
procedure reference.
argument keyword A dummy argument
name. Argument keywords can be used to
pass actual arguments to a procedure in
any order if the procedure has an explicit
interface.
array A rectangular pattern of elements of
the same data type. The properties of an
array include its rank, shape, extent, and
data type. See also bounds and
dimension.
array constructor A rank-one array
represented as a sequence of scalar or array
values that may be constant or variable.
array element An individual, scalar
component of an array that is specified by
the array name and, in parenthesis, one or
more subscripts that identify the element’s
position in the array.
array element order The order in arrays
are laid out in memory. The array element
order for HP Fortran 90 arrays is
column-major order. Array element order
can also be used to determine sequence
association.
array pointer An array that has the
POINTER attribute and may therefore be
used to point to a target object.
array section A subset of an array
specified by a subscript triplet or vector
subscript in one or more dimensions. For
an array a(4,4), a(2:4:2,2:4:2) is an
array section containing only the evenly
indexed elements a(2,2), a(4,2), a(2,4),
and a(4,4).
array-valued Having the property of being
an array. For example, an array-valued
function has a return value that is an
array.