Hollerith constants support (The GNU Fortran Compiler)

#### 5.1.14 Hollerith constants support ¶

GNU Fortran supports Hollerith constants in assignments, `DATA` statements, function and subroutine arguments. A Hollerith constant is written as a string of characters preceded by an integer constant indicating the character count, and the letter `H` or `h`, and stored in bytewise fashion in a numeric (`INTEGER`, `REAL`, or `COMPLEX`), `LOGICAL` or `CHARACTER` variable. The constant is padded with spaces or truncated to fit the size of the variable in which it is stored.

Examples of valid uses of Hollerith constants:

          complex*16 x(2)
          data x /16Habcdefghijklmnop, 16Hqrstuvwxyz012345/
          x(1) = 16HABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP
          call foo (4h abc)

Examples of Hollerith constants:

          integer*4 a
          a = 0H         ! Invalid, at least one character is needed.
          a = 4HAB12     ! Valid
          a = 8H12345678 ! Valid, but the Hollerith constant is truncated.
          a = 3Hxyz      ! Valid, but the Hollerith constant is padded.

In general, Hollerith constants were used to provide a rudimentary facility for handling character strings in early Fortran compilers, prior to the introduction of `CHARACTER` variables in Fortran 77; in those cases, the standard-compliant equivalent is to convert the program to use proper character strings. On occasion, there may be a case where the intent is specifically to initialize a numeric variable with a given byte sequence. In these cases, the same result can be obtained by using the `TRANSFER` statement, as in this example.

          integer(kind=4) :: a
          a = transfer ("abcd", a)     ! equivalent to: a = 4Habcd

The use of the `-fdec` option extends support of Hollerith constants to comparisons:

          integer*4 a
          a = 4hABCD
          if (a .ne. 4habcd) then
            write(*,*) "no match"
          end if

Supported types are numeric (`INTEGER`, `REAL`, or `COMPLEX`), and `CHARACTER`.