Description

Each character occupies 8 bits of storage, aligned on a character boundary. Character arrays and common blocks containing character variables are packed in an array of character variables. The first character of one element follows the last character of the preceding element, without holes.

The length, len must be greater than 0. If len is omitted, it is assumed equal to 1.

For local and common character variables, symbolic constants, dummy arguments, or function names, len can be an integer constant, or a parenthesized integer constant expression.

For dummy arguments or function names, len can have another form: a parenthesized asterisk, that is, CHARACTER*(*), which denotes that the function name length is defined in referencing the program unit, and the dummy argument has the length of the actual argument.

For symbolic constants, len can also be a parenthesized asterisk, which indicates that the name is defined as having the length of the constant. This is shown in Example 5 in the next section.

The list c of constants can be used only for a variable, array, or array declarator. There can be only one constant for the immediately preceding variable, and one constant for each element of the immediately preceding array.