The Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) has announced the availability of a significant update to their highly standard-conformant, error-checking, Fortran Compiler. Release 5.3 of the NAG Fortran Compiler, together with the associated NAG Fortran Builder development environment for Microsoft Windows, can now be downloaded from the organisation’s website www.nag.com.

NAG has incorporated a large number of Fortran 2003 and some Fortran 2008 language features into the release as well as the most commonly-used features of OpenMP 3.0. OpenMP is the de-facto standard for parallel programming on shared memory systems.

The NAG Compiler offers developers many valuable checking functions. The compile time error messages help you ensure that your code complies with the ISO/IEC standard. Messages are informative rather than cryptic and contain context information to assist precisely in identifying the error and rectifying code. Any programmer wanting to produce portable, standard-conforming code will benefit from using the NAG Compiler to verify their code base.

The NAG Compiler also features many optional run-time checks, including – array bounds, pointer association, pointer references, procedure references, dangling pointers and undefined variables. Additionally, there are facilities to trace memory allocation and deallocation and to help identify memory leaks.

The NAG Compiler has been used for many years by some of the most proficient Fortran programmers both as their main compiler system and as an additional resource to verify standards adherence for their code.

The NAG Compiler is available as a command line application under Linux and Mac OS X and is included within an integrated development environment under Microsoft Windows - NAG Fortran Builder. The Compiler is well suited to teaching and for those programmers wishing to update their skills to the new language.

An independent view is offered by a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Loughborough, Dr. Ian Thompson, who commented; “Having been involved in testing the release candidate, I have found that the NAG Compiler now offers better support for modern Fortran language features than other available compilers”.