Degenerate Conic

Algorithms • Modern Fortran Programming • Orbital Mechanics

Aug 10, 2014

Fixed to Free Form Fortran Conversion

Old style fixed-form Fortran code (commonly called FORTRAN 77 style) was replaced by free-form style in 1991 with the introduction of the Fortran 90 standard. In spite of this, fixed-form code can still be found in legacy projects, and there are some people who still write it for whatever reason (possibly unaware that a better format exists). There are also a large number of high-quality legacy fixed-form code libraries from back in the day that still work great. All modern Fortran compilers accept both fixed and free-form code, but there is very little reason for new fixed-form code to be written today. Also, it is often convenient to convert old-style code to free-format if it is going to be maintained or upgraded by a programmer in the present day. The following list provides links to several free tools to convert fixed-form code to free-form code (there are also several commercially-available solutions):

See also

  1. Source Form Just Wants to be Free
  2. Modernizing Old Fortran