Strings

The Fortran language can treat characters as single character or contiguous strings.

A character string may be only one character in length, or it could even be of zero length. In Fortran, character constants are given between a pair of double or single quotes.

The intrinsic data type character stores characters and strings. The length of the string can be specified by len specifier. If no length is specified, it is 1. You can refer individual characters within a string referring by position; the left most character is at position 1.

String Declaration

Declaring a string is same as other variables −

type-specifier :: variable_name

For example,

Character(len = 20) :: firstname, surname

you can assign a value like,

character (len = 40) :: name  
name = “Zara Ali”

The following example demonstrates declaration and use of character data type −

Live Demo

program hello
implicit none

   character(len = 15) :: surname, firstname 
   character(len = 6) :: title 
   character(len = 25)::greetings
   
   title = 'Mr.' 
   firstname = 'Rowan' 
   surname = 'Atkinson'
   greetings = 'A big hello from Mr. Beans'
   
   print *, 'Here is', title, firstname, surname
   print *, greetings
   
end program hello

When you compile and execute the above program it produces the following result −

Here isMr.   Rowan          Atkinson       
A big hello from Mr. Bean

String Concatenation

The concatenation operator //, concatenates strings.

The following example demonstrates this −

Live Demo

program hello
implicit none

   character(len = 15) :: surname, firstname 
   character(len = 6) :: title 
   character(len = 40):: name
   character(len = 25)::greetings
   
   title = 'Mr.' 
   firstname = 'Rowan' 
   surname = 'Atkinson'
   
   name = title//firstname//surname
   greetings = 'A big hello from Mr. Beans'
   
   print *, 'Here is', name
   print *, greetings
   
end program hello

When you compile and execute the above program it produces the following result −

Here is Mr. Rowan Atkinson       
A big hello from Mr. Bean

Extracting Substrings

In Fortran, you can extract a substring from a string by indexing the string, giving the start and the end index of the substring in a pair of brackets. This is called extent specifier.

The following example shows how to extract the substring ‘world’ from the string ‘hello world’ −

program subString

   character(len = 11)::hello
   hello = "Hello World"
   print*, hello(7:11)
   
end program subString 

When you compile and execute the above program it produces the following result −

World

Example

The following example uses the date_and_time function to give the date and time string. We use extent specifiers to extract the year, date, month, hour, minutes and second information separately.

Live Demo

program  datetime
implicit none

   character(len = 8) :: dateinfo ! ccyymmdd
   character(len = 4) :: year, month*2, day*2

   character(len = 10) :: timeinfo ! hhmmss.sss
   character(len = 2)  :: hour, minute, second*6

   call  date_and_time(dateinfo, timeinfo)

   !  let’s break dateinfo into year, month and day.
   !  dateinfo has a form of ccyymmdd, where cc = century, yy = year
   !  mm = month and dd = day

   year  = dateinfo(1:4)
   month = dateinfo(5:6)
   day   = dateinfo(7:8)

   print*, 'Date String:', dateinfo
   print*, 'Year:', year
   print *,'Month:', month
   print *,'Day:', day

   !  let’s break timeinfo into hour, minute and second.
   !  timeinfo has a form of hhmmss.sss, where h = hour, m = minute
   !  and s = second

   hour   = timeinfo(1:2)
   minute = timeinfo(3:4)
   second = timeinfo(5:10)

   print*, 'Time String:', timeinfo
   print*, 'Hour:', hour
   print*, 'Minute:', minute
   print*, 'Second:', second   
   
end program  datetime

When you compile and execute the above program, it gives the detailed date and time information −

Date String: 20140803
Year: 2014
Month: 08
Day: 03
Time String: 075835.466
Hour: 07
Minute: 58
Second: 35.466

Trimming Strings

The trim function takes a string, and returns the input string after removing all trailing blanks.

Example

program trimString
implicit none

   character (len = *), parameter :: fname="Susanne", sname="Rizwan"
   character (len = 20) :: fullname 
   
   fullname = fname//" "//sname !concatenating the strings
   
   print*,fullname,", the beautiful dancer from the east!"
   print*,trim(fullname),", the beautiful dancer from the east!"
   
end program trimString

When you compile and execute the above program it produces the following result −

Susanne Rizwan      , the beautiful dancer from the east!
 Susanne Rizwan, the beautiful dancer from the east!

Left and Right Adjustment of Strings

The function adjustl takes a string and returns it by removing the leading blanks and appending them as trailing blanks.

The function adjustr takes a string and returns it by removing the trailing blanks and appending them as leading blanks.

Example

program hello
implicit none

   character(len = 15) :: surname, firstname 
   character(len = 6) :: title 
   character(len = 40):: name
   character(len = 25):: greetings
   
   title = 'Mr. ' 
   firstname = 'Rowan' 
   surname = 'Atkinson'
   greetings = 'A big hello from Mr. Beans'
   
   name = adjustl(title)//adjustl(firstname)//adjustl(surname)
   print *, 'Here is', name
   print *, greetings
   
   name = adjustr(title)//adjustr(firstname)//adjustr(surname)
   print *, 'Here is', name
   print *, greetings
   
   name = trim(title)//trim(firstname)//trim(surname)
   print *, 'Here is', name
   print *, greetings
   
end program hello

When you compile and execute the above program it produces the following result −

Here is Mr. Rowan  Atkinson           
A big hello from Mr. Bean
Here is Mr. Rowan Atkinson    
A big hello from Mr. Bean
Here is Mr.RowanAtkinson                        
A big hello from Mr. Bean

Searching for a Substring in a String

The index function takes two strings and checks if the second string is a substring of the first string. If the second argument is a substring of the first argument, then it returns an integer which is the starting index of the second string in the first string, else it returns zero.

Example

program hello
implicit none

   character(len=30) :: myString
   character(len=10) :: testString
   
   myString = 'This is a test'
   testString = 'test'
   
   if(index(myString, testString) == 0)then
      print *, 'test is not found'
   else
      print *, 'test is found at index: ', index(myString, testString)
   end if
   
end program hello

When you compile and execute the above program it produces the following result −

test is found at index: 11