I am recently working with a F90 code project. I am using gfortran (linux and MinGW) to compile it. There is something interesting in file loct.F90.
# define TYPE real(4)
# define SUBNAME(x) s ## x
# include "loct_inc.F90"
# undef SUBNAME
# undef TYPE
# define TYPE real(8)
# define SUBNAME(x) d ## x
# include "loct_inc.F90"
# undef SUBNAME
# undef TYPE
...
The loct_inc.F90 file looks like this:
subroutine SUBNAME(loct_pointer_copy_1)(o, i)
...
end subroutine SUBNAME(loct_pointer_copy_1)
subroutine SUBNAME(loct_pointer_copy_2)(o, i)
...
end subroutine SUBNAME(loct_pointer_copy_2)
...
I think in the file loct.F90 the author used sets of macros (C/C++ style). Each set is used to define a data type (e.g. real(4), real(8), character, etc). The file loct_inc.F90 provide a set of function which is the same except the type of the variables. These two files works together as a template of c++ in my opinion.
In the end one should have a set of subroutines:
sloct_pointer_copy_1(o, i)
sloct_pointer_copy_2(o, i)
...
dloct_pointer_copy_1(o, i)
dloct_pointer_copy_2(o, i)
...
But when I tried to compile loct.F90 (gfortran -c loct.F90), I get some errors.
basic/loct_inc.F90:21.13: Included at basic/loct.F90:256:
subroutine s ## loct_pointer_copy_1(o, i) 1 Error: Syntax error in SUBROUTINE statement at (1)
It seems gfortran replace SUBNAME(loct_pointer_copy_1)(o, i) with s ## loct_pointer_copy_1(o, i). But according to c++ macro, the correct replace should be sloct_pointer_copy_1(o, i).
Could anyone tell me why this happened?