HP Fortran Programmer Guide (766160-001, March 2014)
Glossary
A-B
archive library A library of routines that can be linked to an executable program at
link-time. The names of archive libraries have the .a extension.
See also shared library.
aliasing Referencing a variable by more than one name. Examples of aliasing
include:
• Passing the same variable as two or more actual arguments.
• Using the EQUIVALENCE statement.
• Referencing an element of an array declared in common with an
out-of-bounds subscript.
• Passing a common variable as an actual argument.
In general, aliasing inhibits optimization.
alignment The positioning of data within memory. Except for objects larger than 8
bytes, HP Fortran 90 aligns data on a byte boundary that is a multiple of
its size. Objects larger than 8 bytes are aligned on 8-byte boundaries.
automatic variable A variable that is allocated on the stack. By default, program variables in
HP Fortran 90 are automatic. Two characteristics of automatic variables
are of note:
• They are allocated at each invocation of the procedure in which they
are declared and deallocated upon return from the procedure. This
means that automatic variables do not retain their value between
invocations.
• They must be explicitly initialized.
back-end The component of the compiler that optimizes and generates object code.
See also front-end..
Basic Linear
Algebra
Subroutine library
A library of de facto standard routines for performing low-level vector and
matrix operations. To access routines in this library, you must compile with
the -lblas option.
BLAS See Basic Linear Algebra Subroutine library.
BOZ constant An integer constant that is used as an initializer in a DATA statement and
is formatted in binary (B), octal (O), or hexadecimal (Z) notation.
buffering, tty See tty buffering.
C-D
cpp See C preprocessor.
C preprocessor A C language utility that removes or adds statements in a program source
text, in accordance with directives that have been inserted in the source
file. HP Fortran 90 can pass source files to the C preprocessor (cpp) for
preprocessing and then send the output to the compiler.
column-major
order
The method of storing Fortran 90 arrays in memory. Column-major order
requires the columns of a two-dimensional array to be in contiguous memory
locations. For example, given the array a (3,4), element a (1,1)would
154 Glossary