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(g77-300.info)Data Types and Constants

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Data Types and Constants
========================

   (The following information augments or overrides the information in
Chapter 4 of ANSI X3.9-1978 FORTRAN 77 in specifying the GNU Fortran
language.  Chapter 4 of that document otherwise serves as the basis for
the relevant aspects of GNU Fortran.)

   To more concisely express the appropriate types for entities, this
document uses the more concise Fortran 90 nomenclature such as
`INTEGER(KIND=1)' instead of the more traditional, but less portably
concise, byte-size-based nomenclature such as `INTEGER*4', wherever
reasonable.

   When referring to generic types--in contexts where the specific
precision and range of a type are not important--this document uses the
generic type names `INTEGER', `LOGICAL', `REAL', `COMPLEX', and
`CHARACTER'.

   In some cases, the context requires specification of a particular
type.  This document uses the `KIND=' notation to accomplish this
throughout, sometimes supplying the more traditional notation for
clarification, though the traditional notation might not work the same
way on all GNU Fortran implementations.

   Use of `KIND=' makes this document more concise because `g77' is
able to define values for `KIND=' that have the same meanings on all
systems, due to the way the Fortran 90 standard specifies these values
are to be used.

   (In particular, that standard permits an implementation to
arbitrarily assign nonnegative values.  There are four distinct sets of
assignments: one to the `CHARACTER' type; one to the `INTEGER' type;
one to the `LOGICAL' type; and the fourth to both the `REAL' and
`COMPLEX' types.  Implementations are free to assign these values in
any order, leave gaps in the ordering of assignments, and assign more
than one value to a representation.)

   This makes `KIND=' values superior to the values used in
non-standard statements such as `INTEGER*4', because the meanings of
the values in those statements vary from machine to machine, compiler
to compiler, even operating system to operating system.

   However, use of `KIND=' is _not_ generally recommended when writing
portable code (unless, for example, the code is going to be compiled
only via `g77', which is a widely ported compiler).  GNU Fortran does
not yet have adequate language constructs to permit use of `KIND=' in a
fashion that would make the code portable to Fortran 90
implementations; and, this construct is known to _not_ be accepted by
many popular FORTRAN 77 implementations, so it cannot be used in code
that is to be ported to those.

   The distinction here is that this document is able to use specific
values for `KIND=' to concisely document the types of various
operations and operands.

   A Fortran program should use the FORTRAN 77 designations for the
appropriate GNU Fortran types--such as `INTEGER' for `INTEGER(KIND=1)',
`REAL' for `REAL(KIND=1)', and `DOUBLE COMPLEX' for
`COMPLEX(KIND=2)'--and, where no such designations exist, make use of
appropriate techniques (preprocessor macros, parameters, and so on) to
specify the types in a fashion that may be easily adjusted to suit each
particular implementation to which the program is ported.  (These types
generally won't need to be adjusted for ports of `g77'.)

   Further details regarding GNU Fortran data types and constants are
provided below.

Types

Constants

Integer Type

Character Type