Watch Window shows incorrect value for REAL variables in Fortran debug mode (Visual Studio + Intel Fortran)

Question

Hello everyone,

I’m facing a strange issue in Visual Studio while debugging a Fortran project. I'm using Intel Fortran (oneAPI) with Visual Studio 2019, and everything works fine except the Watch window in debug mode shows incorrect values for some REAL variables.

I defined two variables as follows:

REAL :: MainWidth, MainHeight

Then I read their values from a formatted input file:

READ (5,31) MainWidth, MainHeight
WRITE(*,*) 'Main = ', MainWidth, MainHeight
31 FORMAT (2F8.0)

When I run the code, the output is correct:

Main =  20000.00   20000.00

However, in the Watch Window, MainHeight shows something like 30.0, and MainWidth shows a large garbage number like 1184645120 and are interpreted as an INTEGER(4).

Even though the variable is declared as REAL, Visual Studio seems to misinterpret its type during debugging.

I've attached screenshots showing:

• 

Why does the Watch window interpret a REAL variable as INTEGER(4) even though it's correctly declared?

Is this a known issue with Intel Fortran or Visual Studio debug integration?

• Is there a workaround to force correct type recognition in the Watch window?

Thanks for your time and support 🙏