http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=45170
--- Comment #23 from Hans-Werner Boschmann <boschmann at tp1 dot physik.uni-siegen.de> 2011-08-26 10:05:32 UTC --- Is there any chance that gfortran 4.7.0 will support allocatable character lengths? Using fortran for text processing has been painful since time immemorial and this little feature is a huge leap indeed. Unlike iso_varying_string you can combine allocatable characters to all other built-in features of fortran like print *,string. Additionally, as soon as it is allocated, you can assign it to a non-allocatable dummy characters so no one but the supplier has to care about whether it is dynamic or not. That's why it is much more powerful than iso_varying_string.
