RATFOR, short for Rational Fortran, is a programming language developed in the 1980s as an extension to Fortran. It was designed to improve the efficiency of writing and maintaining large-scale Fortran programs. RATFOR introduced several features that facilitated structured programming principles in Fortran, which was previously criticized for its lack of support for modern programming constructs.
The RATFOR language replaced traditional Fortran statement labels with meaningful control structures such as loops, conditionals, and subroutines. This made the code more readable and easier to understand, enabling better modularization and code organization. It also introduced a preprocessor, similar to the one used in C, that allowed programmers to include macros and conditional compilation, aiding in code reusability and customization.
With RATFOR, programmers were able to combine the power of Fortran, known for its numerical computing capabilities, with the clarity and maintainability of structured programming languages. The language's syntax closely resembled C and Pascal, making it easier for programmers familiar with those languages to quickly adapt to RATFOR.
Although RATFOR was popular in the 1980s and early 1990s, its usage has declined over time. This is partly due to the emergence of more modern programming languages that inherently support structured programming, such as C++, Java, and Python. Nonetheless, RATFOR played a significant role in the evolution of Fortran and contributed to the development of newer programming paradigms.
