http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=52393
--- Comment #4 from Ian Harvey <ian_harvey at bigpond dot com> 2012-02-27 10:30:32 UTC --- Maybe there's some additional cleverness going on then, because the following equally contrived example: PROGRAM ReadMeOne IMPLICIT NONE CHARACTER(10) :: var READ ('(A)'), var PRINT *, var END PROGRAM ReadMeOne which is again supposed to be the second form of read, when compiled with: gfortran -Wall -std=f2003 appears to work!