Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!beta!a!jlg
From: jlg@a.UUCP (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: FORTRAN horrors (character init)
Message-ID: <563@a.UUCP>
Date: 11 Apr 88 21:08:08 GMT
Organization: Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos, N.M.
Lines: 26
Summary: Init chars

> Fortran 77 DOES have one VERY serious problem with strings: it
> is impossible to initialize them with non-printing characters. You can,
> of course, kludge it by installing things in after initialization:
> 
> 
>         character*3 escseq
>         data  escseq/' [C'/
> 
> ...     
>          escseq(1:1) = char(27)

Why not do:
          character*3 escseq
          parameter (escseq=char(27)//'[C')

This is Fortran 77 standard.  Or, if you insist that escseq needs to be a
variable, then do:
          character*3 escseq,pescsq
          parameter (pescsq=char(27)//'[C')
          data escseq/pesc/

This also is standard Fortran 77.  This second is admittedly clumsy, but
it works.  Note that the 'fix' for this problem in Fortran 8x is not very 
popular (Object-Oriented Data statements (5.2.6.2)).

J. Giles
Los Alamos