VSI Fortran provides the following language features to
  facilitate compatibility with other versions of Fortran:

   o  The DEFINE FILE, ENCODE, DECODE, and FIND statements

   o  An alternative syntax for the PARAMETER statement

   o  The VIRTUAL statement

   o  The AND, OR, XOR, IMAG, LSHIFT, and RSHIFT intrinsic functions

   o  An alternative syntax for octal and hexadecimal constants

   o  An alternative syntax for a record specifier

   o  An alternative syntax for the DELETE statement

   o  An alternative form for namelist external records

   o  Record structures

   o  VSI Fortran pointers

  These language features are particularly useful in transporting
  older Fortran programs to systems on Alpha processors.  However,
  you should avoid using them in new programs on these systems, and
  in new programs for which portability to other Fortran 95 or
  Fortran 90 implementations is important.