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From: fwebb@bbn.com (Fred Webb)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Dates for the different versions of FORTRAN?
Message-ID: <58910@bbn.BBN.COM>
Date: 14 Aug 90 14:24:18 GMT
References: <3093.26c6b1cd@cc.curtin.edu.au> <1990Aug13.163352.19634@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca>
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Reply-To: fwebb@BBN.COM (Fred Webb)
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In article <3093.26c6b1cd@cc.curtin.edu.au> North_TJ@cc.curtin.edu.au (Tim
North) writes:
>if someone could make corrections/additions to the following table:
>
>	1953	FORTRAN I
>	19??	FORTRAN II  ?
>	19??	FORTRAN III ?
>	1966	FORTRAN IV
>	1977	FORTRAN 77
>	198?	FORTRAN 8X
>	1990?   FORTRAN 90  ?
>

I'm not sure Fortran III ever appeared, or if it did, it never got much
use. When Fortran IV first appeared, everyone was still using Fortran II.
It's possible some manufacturer made and sold a product called Fortran III,
but I don't remember one.

I think Fortran IV first appeared around 1963. I worked at NASA that summer,
and the Mission Control Center programs were being done using the brand new
IBM 7094s, which came with Fortran IV, I think. Fortran IV was (originally)
an IBM product, and definitely preceeded the '66 standard. Many of the
extensions that were in Fortran IV provided the basis for the '66 standard.
(Back then, only things that had actually been implemented by someone were
considered for inclusion in the standard.)

Various manufacturers made and sold Fortran IV compilers, and extensions
to Fortran IV called Fortran V (all different, of course) between the
time IBM first released Fortran IV and when the Fortran '66 standard really
took hold.

So Fortran '66 should be added to the list, with the 1966 date, and Fortran IV
should be moved back a few years.

The "Fortran '77" standard wasn't officially published until 1978, so if you
want to give a single date, maybe 1978 would be better. The final approval
by the Fortran standards committee was in 1977, but final ANSI approval of
the standard happened April 3, 1978. In spite of this, the language is called
Fortran 77.

Fortran 8x was the term used to refer to the various drafts of the next ANSI
standard. There are probably a couple of compilers out there that claim they
are "Fortran 8x" compilers, but that's an absolutely meaningless term. That
could mean they conform to some or all of any of about 25 different documents.

The ANSI standards committee recently decided that the new standard, when
issued, would be called Fortran 90. However, the Fortran 90 standard is about
to go out for another public review period, so it will probably be a year or
so before the standard is actually issued. So, to give a correct date for
Fortran '90, you'll have to wait until the standard is actually published -
maybe 1991, but it could easily be 1992.

						-- Fred