This paper gives a detailed discussion of the boundary integral method for solving Poisson’s equation. The technique employed is conventional, using linear boundary and domain elements. In fact, the main reason for the paper is the implementation of the boundary integral method in a modular, standard FORTRAN 77 program designed to reveal the details of the algorithm. The paper also aims to permit a user to modify the code to use different elements.

Though the code meets its objectives, it could have been improved by using FORTRAN 77 constructs such as PARAMETER statements, IF THEN ELSE statements, and generic functions. Also, the code relies entirely on implicit typing and uses low-accuracy approximations to integration constants and &pgr;. Hence, the code is not easily modified to use double-precision calculation. Unfortunately, in an illustrative program, on the last two pages some segments of the code are seriously out of order though all the code seems to be present. Finally, this reviewer would have preferred to see the linear algebraic equations that arise solved by standard software such as that in LINPACK.