LEN

The LEN function takes a character argument and returns its length as an integer. The argument may be a local character variable or array element but this will just return a constant. LEN is more useful in procedures where character dummy arguments (and character function names) may have their length passed over from the calling unit, so that the length may be different on each procedure call. The length returned by LEN is that declared for the item. Sometimes it is more useful to find the length excluding trailing blanks. The next function does just that, using LEN in the process.

 
      INTEGER FUNCTION LENGTH(STRING) 
*Returns length of string ignoring trailing blanks 
      CHARACTER*(*) STRING 
      DO 15, I = LEN(STRING), 1, -1 
         IF(STRING(I:I) .NE. ' ') GO TO 20 
15    CONTINUE 
20    LENGTH = I 
      END