ABSTRACT
Besides Fortran’s intrinsic data types (INTEGER, REAL, COMPLEX, CHARACTER and LOGICAL) it is possible to manipulate data in the form of individual binary bits. Bits are similar in some ways to LOGICAL data, in that both are restricted to two possible values, called .FALSE, or .TRUE, for LOGICAL and 0 or 1 for a bit. However, lengthy sequences of binary data can be handled much more naturally and flexibly as bits than in LOGICAL form. Bits are packed within data of integer type, and stored in memory much more economically than LOGICAL data.
