Object Oriented Programming with Fortran: Glossary

Fortran supports object oriented design.

Some consideration for performance should be taken with object oriented design early on, e.g. create objects containing arrays rather than arrays of objects.

Modules are used to package variables, types, and procedures together.

Access to variables and procedures within the module can be controlled with the private and public access modifiers.

A derived type allows you to package together a number of basic types that can then be thought of collectively as one new derived type.

Access modifiers can be applied within derived types as well as within modules to restrict access to members of that derived type.

Type extension allows you to build upon an existing derived type to create a new derived type while adding new functionality or modifying existing functionality.

Allows reuse of common code between derived types.

An interface block can act as either a block of definitions of your procedures (explicit interface) or as a means of associating different procedures with one common name (generic interface).

Procedures that are part of the same generic interface block must be distinguishable from each other based on the number, order, and type of arguments passed.

A type bound procedure allows you to associate a procedure with a type.

Extended types can use these type bound procedures by using the class keyword rather than the type keyword.

select type allows different code paths to execute based on the object’s type similar to select case.

A destructor is used to perform clean up when an object goes out of scope.

To create a destructor use the final keyword when declaring at type bound procedure instead of the procedure keyword.

Common Fortran operators can be overloaded to work with your custom derived types.