Avoiding memory leaks with derived types

Abstract

In this short note a solution is presented for one particular type of memory leak that can occur with derived types. With the advent of Fortran 2X and, before that, the adoption of Technical Report ISO/IEC 15581: 1998(E) (the "allocatable array extension") this solution will be superfluous, nevertheless it seems worthwhile to describe it, as it can solve the problem in the short term.