g77 inconsistency?

[Christos Tountas <cvt@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

"Ugly" initialization of numeric variables with text strings seems
to work for some types of numeric variables only.

The following works:
    integer i
    data i /'abcd'/

But this does not:
    real*8 r
    data r /'abcdefgh'/

More than a dozen compilers  on different platforms over the years
have done this correctly. Cannot get g77 to do it with
any combination of options. I have a lot of old code that needs it.
Any hope?

CT