------- Comment #3 from jvdelisle at gcc dot gnu dot org 2006-12-08 14:58 ------- Yes, the FORM= is what you use if you want to determine the current opened status of a file. We had discussion of this question on list just a few months ago. In the case of (un)formatted= there may be a file or device that would not support unformatted I/O due to internal restrictions on the data set, for example ASCII only. In that case unformatted would just not work.
I am not sure whether this is just a legacy feature or whether the standard makers included this for completeness. Regardless, it doe not seem to be very useful. The fact that this has come up again indicates that maybe we need some documentation in the gfortran manual to explain this to users. Intuitively they want to grab the wrong specifier to find out if a file was opened for formatted or unformatted I/O. -- http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=30114
