Statement: Translates data from internal (binary) form to character form. It is comparable to using internal files in formatted sequential WRITE statements.
Syntax
The interaction between the format specifier and the I/O list is the same as for a formatted I/O statement.
Rules and Behavior
The number of characters that the ENCODE statement can translate depends on the data type of b. For example, an INTEGER(2) array can contain two characters per element, so that the maximum number of characters is twice the number of elements in that array.
The maximum number of characters a character variable or character array element can contain is the length of the character variable or character array element.
The maximum number of characters a character array can contain is the length of each element multiplied by the number of elements.
Examples
Consider the following:
DIMENSION K(3)
CHARACTER*12 A,B
DATA A/'123456789012'/
ENCODE(12,100,A) K
100 FORMAT(3I4)
ENCODE(12,100,B) K(3), K(2), K(1)
The 12 characters are stored in array K:
K(1) = 1234
K(2) = 5678
K(3) = 9012
The ENCODE statement translates the values K(3), K(2), and K(1) to character form and stores the characters in the character variable B.:
B = '901256781234'