Overloaded Functions...

program cosine

real x

real*8 y

x = 0.5

y = 0.5

print *, x, cos(x)

print *, y, cos(y)

end

------

.5 .8775826

.5 .8775825618903728

You call cos once with a real and once with a real*8 argument. The compiler sees what you want and calls the right routine.

This is an overloaded function (in Fortran!)

You may have used this without much thought:

+------+---------+----------+------------+-------------+

+------+---------+----------+------------+-------------+

| 1 | COS | COS | REAL*4 | REAL*4 |

+------+---------+----------+------------+-------------+

This is the specific function called for a given type of argument

Unfortunately, this works with the few Fortran intrinsic functions only.