6.1.10 BOZ literal constants

Besides decimal constants, Fortran also supports binary (b), octal (o) and hexadecimal (z) integer constants. The syntax is: ‘prefix quote digits quote’, were the prefix is either b, o or z, quote is either ' or " and the digits are 0 or 1 for binary, between 0 and 7 for octal, and between 0 and F for hexadecimal. (Example: b'01011101'.)

Up to Fortran 95, BOZ literal constants were only allowed to initialize integer variables in DATA statements. Since Fortran 2003 BOZ literal constants are also allowed as actual arguments to the REAL, DBLE, INT and CMPLX intrinsic functions. The BOZ literal constant is simply a string of bits, which is padded or truncated as needed, during conversion to a numeric type. The Fortran standard states that the treatment of the sign bit is processor dependent. Gfortran interprets the sign bit as a user would expect.

As a deprecated extension, GNU Fortran allows hexadecimal BOZ literal constants to be specified using the X prefix. That the BOZ literal constant can also be specified by adding a suffix to the string, for example, Z'ABC' and 'ABC'X are equivalent. Additionally, as extension, BOZ literals are permitted in some contexts outside of DATA and the intrinsic functions listed in the Fortran standard. Use -fallow-invalid-boz to enable the extension.