Ratfor (17KB tar.gz)
is freely available on our ftp site. (You may have to press the shift key
to download the file to your system rather than viewing the file in your
browser).
Ratfor is preprocessor for FORTRAN code that allows us to use
C-like flow expressions. Jon Claerbout believes that Ratfor is
the best available expository language for mathematical algorithms.
Ratfor was invented by Brian Kernigham who also co-wrote the first C book.
You will not really need precise definitions of Ratfor to use it.
Statements on a line may be separated by a ";". Statements may be
grouped together with braces {}. Do loops do not require statement
numbers because {} defines the range, etc.
The Fortran relational operators .gt.,.ge,.ne., etc. may
be written >,<=,!=,etc.
Unfortunately, the Ratfor switch statement conflicts with implicit undefined declaration, consequently we never use it.
Ratfor also frees you from FORTRANs strict indentation rules.
Anything from a # to the end of the line is a comment.
Ratfor offers quite a few more features more and we strongly
recommend it to any FORTRAN programmer.