Fortran90 cray writing unformatted array using "*"

Question

I have a program, written in fortran90, that is writing an array to a file, but for some reason is using an asterix to represent multiple columns:

8*9,  4,  2*9,  4

later on reading from the file I am getting I/O errors:

lib-4190 : UNRECOVERABLE library error

A numeric input field contains an invalid character.

Encountered during a list-directed READ from unit 10 Fortran unit 10 is connected to a sequential formatted text file:

Does anyone have any idea why this is happening, and if there is a flag to feed to the compiler to prevent it. I'm using the cray fortran compiler, and the write statement looks like this:

write (lun,*) nsf_species(bundle%species(1:bundle%n_prim))

Update:

The line reading in the data file looks like:

read (lun,*) Info(ifile)%alpha_i(1:size)

I have checked to ensure that it is this line that is causing the problem.

* is not unformatted unformatted essentially means binary, the raw representation. — Vladimir F
have you looked at the compiler docs? I'd be surprised if there is not an option to disable the repeat count. — agentp
Hi guys, thanks for having a look. The read statement has been added, and I have looked through the compiler docs and couldn't find anything to disable this formatting. — user5151524
Půease do NOT edit your question with "Problem solved", accept the answer tat helped you instead. — Vladimir F

ahart ahart · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-30T13:19:37

This compression of list-directed output is a very useful feature of the Cray Compilation Environment when writing out large amounts of data. This compressed output will, however, not be read in correctly, as you point out (which is less useful).

You can modify this behaviour, not using a compiler flag but by using the "assign" command.

Consider this sample code:

PROGRAM test
IMPLICIT NONE

INTEGER :: u

OPEN(UNIT=u,FILE="f1",FORM="FORMATTED",STATUS="UNKNOWN")
WRITE(u,*) 0,0,0
CLOSE(u)

OPEN(UNIT=u,FILE="f2",FORM="FORMATTED",STATUS="UNKNOWN")
WRITE(u,*) 0,0,0
CLOSE(u)

END PROGRAM test

We first build with CCE and execute. Files f1 and f2 both contain the compressed output form:

$ ftn -o test.x test.F90 
$ ./test.x 
$ cat f1
 3*0
$ cat f2
 3*0

Now we will use "assign" to modify the format in file f2. First we need to define a filename to hold the assign information:

$ export FILENV=my_filenenv

Now we use assign to switch off the compressed output for file f2:

$ assign -y on f:f2

Now we rerun the experiment (without needing to recompile):

$ ./test.x 
$ cat f1
 3*0
$ cat f2
 0,  0,  0

There are options to do this for all files, for certain filename patterns or many other cases.

There are other things that assign can do. See "man assign" with PrgEnv-cray loaded for more details.

Fortran90 cray writing unformatted array using "*"

3 Answers