### 3.4.1.1 Specification of Data Type

Type declaration statements explicitly specify the data type of scalar variables. For example, the following statements associate VAR1 with an 8-byte complex storage location, and VAR2 with an 8-byte double-precision storage location:

      COMPLEX VAR1
      DOUBLE PRECISION VAR2

You can explicitly specify the data type of a scalar variable only once.

If no explicit data type specification appears, any variable with a name that begins with the letter in the range specified in the IMPLICIT statement becomes the data type of the variable.

Character type declaration statements specify that given variables represent character values with the length specified. For example, the following statements associate the variable names INLINE, NAME, and NUMBER with storage locations containing character data of lengths 72, 12, and 9, respectively:

      CHARACTER*72 INLINE
      CHARACTER NAME*12, NUMBER*9

In single subprograms, assumed-length character arguments can be used to process character strings with different lengths. The assumed-length character argument has its length specified with an asterisk, for example:

      CHARACTER*(*) CHARDUMMY

The argument CHARDUMMY assumes the length of the actual argument.

For More Information:

- On type declaration statements, see Section 5.1.
- On character type declaration statements, see Section 5.1.2.
- On assumed-length character arguments, see Section 8.8.4.
- On the IMPLICIT statement, see Section 5.9.

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