> I have deleted my posting but perhaps I screwed up the source code. I "copied" > it by hand from the pc to alpha. The space, tab are parameters: > > CHARACTER(LEN=1), PARAMETER, PRIVATE :: space = ACHAR(32) > CHARACTER(LEN=1), PARAMETER, PRIVATE :: tab = ACHAR(9) OK. > my_len_trim = VERIFY(s, space//tab, BACK=.TRUE.) This looks for the concatenation of space with tab, not for one or the other. You need a comma instead of //. Or are you looking for the concatenation? %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%