Initializing Before Specifying

g77 does not allow DATA VAR/1/ to appear in the source code before COMMON VAR, DIMENSION VAR(10), INTEGER VAR, and so on. In general, g77 requires initialization of a variable or array to be specified after all other specifications of attributes (type, size, placement, and so on) of that variable or array are specified (though confirmation of data type is permitted).

It is possible g77 will someday allow all of this, even though it is not allowed by the FORTRAN 77 standard.

Then again, maybe it is better to have g77 always require placement of DATA so that it can possibly immediately write constants to the output file, thus saving time and space.

That is, DATA A/1000000*1/ should perhaps always be immediately writable to canonical assembler, unless it's already known to be in a COMMON area following as-yet-uninitialized stuff, and to do this it cannot be followed by COMMON A.