The POINTER attribute specifies that an entity is a pointer. At runtime, a pointer may be associated with a target (by allocation or pointer assignment), may be disassociated (by NULLIFY or by pointer assignment from another disassociated pointer) or it may have undefined association status. A pointer that is not associated must not be referenced or defined.

A pointer that is an array has its rank specified (by a deferred shape spec), but it has no bounds or shape until it is associated with a target array.

A pointer can only become associated with variables that have the TARGET attribute. Allocating a pointer creates a new variable that implicitly has the TARGET attribute.