Modern Fortran

8 Working with abstract data using derived types

This chapter covers

• Using derived types to create new collections and data types
• Binding procedures to derived types
• Refactoring the tsunami simulator to two dimensions using derived types

So far in this book we’ve worked only with the core Fortran data types: integer, real, complex, logical, and character. Although even with just these data types we’ve been able to do quite a few useful things, such as analyze time series of stock prices or buoy measurements, or write a parallel tsunami simulator, we’re still somewhat limited in what we can do. This becomes more obvious as we encounter more complex problems with abstract and unstructured data that are ubiquitous in real-world applications. ...