Microsoft FORTRAN

A FORTRAN-77 compiler by the Microsoft Corporation that was originally delivered for DOS but later also supported OS/2, Xenix and in a more limited fashion MS Windows 3.x.

History
Initially based on an older CP/M FORTRAN implementation by the same company the original DOS compiler was quite popular in the mid 80s until faster and more complete implementations such as the Watcom F77 compilers started to replace it in the marketplace.

The company introduced FORTRAN 4.1 in the spring of 1988 and it was the first version of the toolkit to support both 16 bit OS/2 and DOS application generation, albeit in text mode only.

FORTRAN 5.0 was released in the summer of 1989 and it added the ability to create applications for the Presentation Manager, FORTRAN 5.1 was introduced a year later shipped with some limited Windows 3 support. In addition to the Fortran77 standard the compiler comes with some support for IBM VS FORTRAN and DEC VAX Fortran extensions. The company also supplied an optional IMSL Fortran Numerical Library.

Note that by the time version 5.1 hit the ground Microsoft was no longer calling the product using the traditional all caps FORTRAN77 naming convention, but simply Microsoft Fortran 5.1. This product was discontinued in 1993.

Versions

 * DOS
 * 1984: 3.2
 * 1985: 3.30
 * 1986: 3.31
 * Feb 1987: 4.0
 * Sep 1987: 4.01


 * XENIX
 * 1986: Microsoft FORTRAN 3.3
 * 1987: Microsoft FORTRAN 3.3.1


 * DOS & OS/2
 * 1988: Microsoft FORTRAN 4.1 (for OS/2 1.0)
 * 1989: Microsoft FORTRAN 5.0 (for OS/2 1.1, DOS 3.0)
 * 1990: Microsoft FORTRAN 5.1
 * 1991: Microsoft IMSL for Fortran 5.1

Known issues
As with other Microsoft tools that support both OS/2 and DOS environments you may run into problems if you try to use those tools on Microsoft Windows systems that support the running of OS/2 1.x programs (Windows NT and 2000), as the system tries to run the DOS executable as an OS/2 program and fails. Either make sure that only the DOS executables are installed or if they are already installed or you migrated the install by hand, precede every command with the FORCEDOS command.

License

 * Discontinued software released under a commercial license

Author

 * Microsoft Corporation

Publications

 * Paul M. Chirlian: Microsoft FORTRAN, Dilithium Press 1981, ISBN 0-918398-46-0
 * Ribar: Fortran Programming for Windows, Osborne McGraw-Hill 1993, ISBN 0-07-881908-3

Weblinks

 * Microsoft KB article 27780: How FORTRAN Stores Two-Dimensional Arrays in Memory
 * Microsoft KB article 67098: FIX: PAUSE Command with Input Redirection in FORTRAN