This chapter has tried to set out the basic features of ZEBRA, together with a justification for attempting to increase the power of the programming facilities available to a programmer in this way. The nature of the data structures has been described, together with the manner in which they can be manipulated, displayed, and written and read.
The ZEBRA system has been developed, in part, because of weaknesses in Fortran 77. The new language standard Fortran 90 provides high level data structure constructs, whose impact on high-energy physics programming are being investigated. Until then, high-energy physicists are able to develop data structures, one of the most important parts of programming, using ZEBRA.