string equality with .EQ. and CASE

[Robinson__Donald]

Create a pair of 5-char strings, str1 and str2. Assign the first with str1='' and leave str2 alone. Then assign "mw2" to them both, character-by-character. Positions 4:5 of str1 will contain space characters (ichar=32); str2 will contain nulls (ichar=0). When placed in a test for equality by .EQ. or CASE SELECT, str1 will match a string "mw2" in the test; str2 won't. str1 will return LEN_TRIM=3; str2 will return LEN_TRIM=5. This behavior seems inconsistent. Shouldn't null (0) and space (32) behave the same way? Any comments would be welcome.

[Intel_C_Intel]

Two comments:

Initialize all variables before using. (don't just 'leave str2 alone')

There are cases where null (0) and space (32) don't behave the same way (mixed language programming for one)

hth,
John

[Steven_L_Intel1]

In Fortran, NUL is just another non-printing character and is not treated the same as a space.