STUDY OF DERIVED PARAMETERS AND THE FORTRAN 90 DERIVED DATA TYPE

Abstract

In many applications the intrinsic data types are not enough to express in code the ideas behind an algorithm or solution to a specific problem. Derived data types and structures allow programmer to group different kinds of information that belong to a single entity. In a way they resemble arrays but with two important differences. First the different elements of a derived data type do not have to be of the same type, thus they may include integer, character or real. Second the different entities making up the derived data type are referred to with a name and not an integer index. The different element of a derived data type are referred to as components. The data type of the component can be any of the intrinsic data types, or a previously defined derived data type.