https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=84615
--- Comment #10 from Dominique d'Humieres <dominiq at lps dot ens.fr> --- The following variant without module of the test in comment 8 behaves the same way program TestStringTools character(len=52) :: txt character(len=1), dimension(52) :: chararr = & (/(char(i+64),char(i+96), i = 1,26)/) print *, ">", chararr, "<" txt = chararray2string(chararr) if (txt .ne. "AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz") & STOP 1 contains function chararray2string(chararray) result(text) character(len=1), dimension(:) :: chararray ! input character(len=int(size(chararray, 1), kind=8)) :: text ! output print *, ">", chararray, "<" do i = 1,size(chararray,1) text(i:i) = chararray (i) end do print *, ">", text, "<" end function chararray2string end program TestStringTools % gfc auto_char_len_3_db_1.f90 -m32 % ./a.out >AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz< Program received signal SIGSEGV: Segmentation fault - invalid memory reference.