ABSTRACT

Often it is possible to reduce the amount of memory that a program uses or the amount of work it needs to do, just by making thoughtful use of the way in which FORTRAN stores arrays and passes parameters to subprograms. Classical FORTRAN has only one native data structure, the statically-allocated rectangular array, but by using arrays in less obvious ways than those we have so far studied it is also possible to represent more complicated data objects. Certain techniques for performing these memory management tasks are programming cliches, used so often as to be practically standard. This Chapter is about some of these commonplace usages.