Exception handling in Fortran

Exceptions are the rule in some programming languages, notably C++, Java and C#. They are used to create robust programs: if an exceptional situation occurs somewhere inside a library, say we can not find a particular record in a database table (or the table itself), this can be dealt with by raising or throwing an exception. A routine at a higher level is supposed to catch this and act upon the situation, either by presenting the user with a meaningful message or by providing an alternative. Exceptions, in the various forms they are implemented in the various languages, are described extensively in, for instance, Wikipedia [2].