CODEWITHSUNDEEP
fortran
ChrisW
ChrisW

Reputation: 5068

Trimming string for directory path

I'm trying to create the full path of a file, entering the parent folder in via a Read statement:

PROGRAM fileTest

  IMPLICIT NONE

  Character(LEN=20) :: dirpath,fullpath

  Write(6,*) 'Enter dir path'
  Read(*,'(a)') dirpath
  dirpath=TRIM(dirpath)
  fullpath=dirpath//'/file.abc'
  print*,fullpath

END PROGRAM fileTest

Using gfortran, the code compiles, but entering /home/chris results in the final print statement still giving

/home/chris         /file.abc

(note the 9 characters of whitespace).

How do I get rid of the spurious whitespaces?!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 4459

Answers (1)

sigma
sigma

Reputation: 2953

This happens because dirpath is still a character(len=20) variable, so its contents are again padded with spaces after dirpath=TRIM(dirpath). You have to do the trimming like this:

fullpath = trim(dirpath)//'/file.abc'

Edit:
As a demonstration of allocatable strings (see my comment), you should be able to handle arbitrary string length more satisfactorily like such, provided your compiler supports this feature:

character(:), allocatable  :: fullpath
character(len=some_length) :: buffer

write(6,*) 'Enter dir path'
read(*,'(a)') buffer
fullpath = trim(buffer) // '/file.abc'

The string fullpath should be automatically allocated to accommodate the exact length of the right-hand side.

Upvotes: 3

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