I am new to Fortran, but it looks to me that Fortran's parameter is similar to using #define in C/C++. Are they similar? Are they used in the same ways? I know #define is a preprocessor statement and I wasn't sure what similarities or differences this may cause #define to have with parameter.
#define is a pre-processor statement to define a macro. Macros are replaced by their value during a pre-processing step. Please note that pre-processor statements are not part of the Fortran standard. Not every compiler supports them.
A parameter, on the other hand, denotes a named constant (similar to the C construct const). Any variable type may be used to declare a constant. This constant is defined at compile-time:
integer, parameter :: i = 1
real, parameter :: a = 1.
complex,parameter :: z = (1., 1.)