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FORTRAN routines with optional arguments
Author(s) -
Gujar Uday G.,
Fellows David M.
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/spe.4380110209
Subject(s) - subroutine , fortran , computer science , programming language , class (philosophy) , variable (mathematics) , range (aeronautics) , sequence (biology) , assembly language , theoretical computer science , mathematics , software , artificial intelligence , engineering , mathematical analysis , biology , genetics , aerospace engineering
In designing a general purpose subroutine package to solve a class of problems, one often has to write subroutines with a large number of arguments. Although these arguments are required to cover a range of possibilities, many of these arguments have some commonly occurring values. The user is thus burdened with supplying a long list of arguments and making sure that the number and types match. An alternate solution is to write such subroutines in assembly language so that they could have a variable number of arguments. This approach is expensive and eliminates a large class of program designers who do not and do not want to know assembler language. This paper describes a facility which enables these program designers to write their routines completely in a higher level language (FORTRAN) and yet enjoy the ‘luxury’ of having a variable number of arguments in the calling sequence.