Unexpected "padding" in a Fortran unformatted file

Question

I don't understand the format of unformatted files in Fortran.

For example:

open (3,file=filename,form="unformatted",access="sequential")
write(3) matrix(i,:)

outputs a column of a matrix into a file. I've discovered that it pads the file with 4 bytes on either end, however I don't really understand why, or how to control this behavior. Is there a way to remove the padding?

Answer 1

For unformated IO, Fortran compilers typically write the length of the record at the beginning and end of the record. Most but not all compilers use four bytes. This aids in reading records, e.g., length at the end assists with a backspace operation. You can suppress this with the new Stream IO mode of Fortran 2003, which was added for compatibility with other languages. Use access='stream' in your open statement.

Answer 2

I never used sequential access with unformatted output for this exact reason. However it depends on the application and sometimes it is convenient to have a record length indicator (especially for unstructured data). As suggested by steabert in Looking at binary output from fortran on gnuplot, you can avoid this by using keyword argument ACCESS = 'DIRECT', in which case you need to specify record length. This method is convenient for efficient storage of large multi-dimensional structured data (constant record length). Following example writes an unformatted file whose size equals the size of the array:

REAL(KIND=4),DIMENSION(10) :: a = 3.141
INTEGER                    :: reclen

INQUIRE(iolength=reclen)a
OPEN(UNIT=10,FILE='direct.out',FORM='UNFORMATTED',&
     ACCESS='DIRECT',RECL=reclen)
WRITE(UNIT=10,REC=1)a
CLOSE(UNIT=10)

END

Note that this is not the ideal aproach in sense of portability. In an unformatted file written with direct access, there is no information about the size of each element. A readme text file that describes the data size does the job fine for me, and I prefer this method instead of padding in sequential mode.