Fortran Alternate Entry Points

Fortran provides a way of having multiple entry points to a single piece of code, allowing a caller to call into the middle of a function. When such code is compiled, it consists of a prologue for the main entry point, a prologue to the alternate entry point, and the main body of code for the function. Each prologue sets up the stack for the function’s eventual return and then branches or falls through to the main body of code.

The prologue code for each entry point always corresponds to a region of text that has the name of that entry point, but the code for the main body of the subroutine receives only one of the possible entry point names. The name received varies from one compiler to another.

The prologues rarely account for any significant amount of time, and the functions corresponding to entry points other than the one that is associated with the main body of the subroutine rarely appear in the Analyzer. Call stacks representing time in Fortran subroutines with alternate entry points usually have PCs in the main body of the subroutine, rather than the prologue, and only the name associated with the main body appears as a callee. Likewise, all calls from the subroutine are shown as being made from the name associated with the main body of the subroutine.