I have found a bug with protected pointers in the Intel Fortran compiler.
Section 5.1.2.12, lines 3-7 of the Fortran 2003 standard says, basically, that the association status of a pointer with the protected attribute cannot be changed outside of the module in which it is declared. However, it is valid to define an object which is pointed to by such a pointer outside of the module.
For some reason I am unable to attach a file to this message, so I've included the source code at the end of this post. I tried compiling with Intel Fortran 12.1, 13.1, and 14.0. All of them stop with the error message:
bug.f90(23): error #7986: A use associated object that has the PROTECTED attribute shall not appear in a variable definition context. [AA]
aa = 1
--^
compilation aborted for bug.f90 (code 1)
The bug is that the Intel Fortran compiler is treating a protected pointer like a protected object, i.e. it is preventing it from being defined outside of the module.
module module
implicit none
public
integer, target, public :: a = 42
integer, pointer, protected :: aa => null()
contains
subroutine alloc()
aa => a
end subroutine alloc
end module module
program program
use module
implicit none
call alloc()
write (*,'(I0)') aa
aa = 1
write (*,'(I0)') aa
end program program
