没有一种语言比另一种语言更快，所以正确的答案是否定的。

你真正要问的是“用Fortran编译器X编译的代码是否比用C编译器Y编译的等效代码更快?”这个问题的答案当然取决于您选择哪两个编译器。

人们可能会问的另一个问题是“考虑到在他们的编译器中优化投入了相同的精力，哪个编译器会生成更快的代码?” 这个问题的答案实际上是Fortran。Fortran编译器有一些优势:

Fortran had to compete with Assembly back in the day when some vowed never to use compilers, so it was designed for speed. C was designed to be flexible. Fortran's niche has been number crunching. In this domain code is never fast enough. So there's always been a lot of pressure to keep the language efficient. Most of the research in compiler optimizations is done by people interested in speeding up Fortran number crunching code, so optimizing Fortran code is a much better known problem than optimizing any other compiled language, and new innovations show up in Fortran compilers first. Biggie: C encourages much more pointer use than Fortran. This drasticly increases the potential scope of any data item in a C program, which makes them far harder to optimize. Note that Ada is also way better than C in this realm, and is a much more modern OO Language than the commonly found Fortran77. If you want an OO langauge that can generate faster code than C, this is an option for you. Due again to its number-crunching niche, the customers of Fortran compilers tend to care more about optimization than the customers of C compilers.

然而，没有什么能阻止人们在C编译器的优化上投入大量精力，并使其生成比他们平台的Fortran编译器更好的代码。事实上，C编译器产生的较大销售额使得这种情况非常可行

Fortran和C语言在特定目的上并没有哪一种语言比另一种更快。对于每种语言的特定编译器，有些编译器比其他编译器更适合某些任务。

多年来，Fortran编译器一直存在，它可以对你的数字例程施黑魔法，使许多重要的计算变得异常快速。当代的C编译器无法做到这一点。因此，在Fortran中出现了许多伟大的代码库。如果您想要使用这些经过良好测试的、成熟的、出色的库，就需要使用Fortran编译器。

我的非正式观察表明，如今人们用任何古老的语言来编码他们繁重的计算内容，如果这需要一段时间，他们就会在一些廉价的计算集群上找到时间。摩尔定律让我们所有人都成了傻瓜。

Fortran有更好的I/O例程，例如隐含的do工具提供了C标准库无法比拟的灵活性。

Fortran编译器直接处理更复杂的 涉及到语法，而且这样的语法不能轻易简化 参数传递形式，C不能有效地实现它。

The faster code is not really up to the language, is the compiler so you can see the ms-vb "compiler" that generates bloated, slower and redundant object code that is tied together inside an ".exe", but powerBasic generates too way better code. Object code made by a C and C++ compilers is generated in some phases (at least 2) but by design most Fortran compilers have at least 5 phases including high-level optimizations so by design Fortran will always have the capability to generate highly optimized code. So at the end is the compiler not the language you should ask for, the best compiler i know is the Intel Fortran Compiler because you can get it on LINUX and Windows and you can use VS as the IDE, if you're looking for a cheap tigh compiler you can always relay on OpenWatcom.

更多信息: http://ed-thelen.org/1401Project/1401-IBM-Systems-Journal-FORTRAN.html

There is another item where Fortran is different than C - and potentially faster. Fortran has better optimization rules than C. In Fortran, the evaluation order of an expressions is not defined, which allows the compiler to optimize it - if one wants to force a certain order, one has to use parentheses. In C the order is much stricter, but with "-fast" options, they are more relaxed and "(...)" are also ignored. I think Fortran has a way which lies nicely in the middle. (Well, IEEE makes the live more difficult as certain evaluation-order changes require that no overflows occur, which either has to be ignored or hampers the evaluation).

另一个更聪明的规则领域是复数。这不仅是因为直到c99才有了它们，而且Fortran中管理它们的规则更好;由于gfortran的Fortran库部分是用C编写的，但实现了Fortran语义，GCC获得了这个选项(也可以用于“普通”C程序):

-fcx-fortran-rules 复杂的乘法和除法遵循Fortran规则。范围缩减是作为复杂除法的一部分进行的，但是没有检查复杂乘法或除法的结果是否是“NaN + I*NaN”，试图在这种情况下挽救这种情况。

The alias rules mentioned above is another bonus and also - at least in principle - the whole-array operations, which if taken properly into account by the optimizer of the compiler, can lead faster code. On the contra side are that certain operation take more time, e.g. if one does an assignment to an allocatable array, there are lots of checks necessary (reallocate? [Fortran 2003 feature], has the array strides, etc.), which make the simple operation more complex behind the scenes - and thus slower, but makes the language more powerful. On the other hand, the array operations with flexible bounds and strides makes it easier to write code - and the compiler is usually better optimizing code than a user.

总的来说，我认为C和Fortran的速度差不多;选择应该更多的是你更喜欢哪种语言，或者是使用Fortran的全数组操作及其更好的可移植性更有用，还是使用C中更好的系统接口和图形用户界面库。

Fortran速度更快有几个原因。然而，它们的重要性是如此无关紧要，或者可以通过任何方式解决，所以它不应该是重要的。现在使用Fortran的主要原因是维护或扩展遗留应用程序。

PURE and ELEMENTAL keywords on functions. These are functions that have no side effects. This allows optimizations in certain cases where the compiler knows the same function will be called with the same values. Note: GCC implements "pure" as an extension to the language. Other compilers may as well. Inter-module analysis can also perform this optimization but it is difficult. standard set of functions that deal with arrays, not individual elements. Stuff like sin(), log(), sqrt() take arrays instead of scalars. This makes it easier to optimize the routine. Auto-vectorization gives the same benefits in most cases if these functions are inline or builtins Builtin complex type. In theory this could allow the compiler to reorder or eliminate certain instructions in certain cases, but likely you'd see the same benefit with the struct { double re; double im; }; idiom used in C. It makes for faster development though as operators work on complex types in Fortran.