5.1.15 Character conversion

Allowing character literals to be used in a similar way to Hollerith constants is a nonstandard extension. This feature is enabled using -fdec-char-conversions and only applies to character literals of kind=1.

Character literals can be used in DATA statements and assignments with numeric (INTEGER, REAL, or COMPLEX) or LOGICAL variables. Like Hollerith constants they are copied bytewise fashion. The constant is padded with spaces or truncated to fit the size of the variable in which it is stored.

Examples:

      integer*4 x
      data x / 'abcd' /

      x = 'A'       ! Is padded.
      x = 'ab1234'  ! Is truncated.