BUG: f2py 1.24 - string scalars fail #23192

Describe the issue:

Since NumPy Version 1.24 string scalars seem to fail. I have a code that defines a character variable of length 8,

character*8 &
       nameprob

which in the puf file becomes

character*8 :: nameprob

as it should. After compilation, however, when I access the variable though its module (data) or its common block (namcom), either way I get

In [6]: k.kd._kepler.data.nameprob
Out[6]: 
array([b'xxx     ', b'xxxz    ', b'        ', b'xxx_0   ', b'        ',
       b'xxxz    ', b'        ', b''], dtype='|S8')

In [9]: k.kd._kepler.namecom.nameprob
Out[9]: 
array([b'xxx     ', b'xxxz    ', b'        ', b'xxx_0   ', b'        ',
       b'xxxz    ', b'        ', b''], dtype='|S8')

an array of length 8 of character of length 8. It seems 8 has been wrongly used twice, as char length and as array length - despite the variable is a scalar. For another variable defined as character*16 there are 16 units of !S16 type. Etc.

What is returned is just extra stuff from memory.

When a dimension is specified, e.g.,

character*2 dimension(121) :: izsym

all is fine

array([b'pn', b'nt', b' h', b'he', b'li', b'be', b' b', b' c', b' n',
       b' o', b' f', b'ne', b'na', b'mg', b'al', b'si', b' p', b' s',
       b'cl', b'ar', b' k', b'ca', b'sc', b'ti', b' v', b'cr', b'mn',
       b'fe', b'co', b'ni', b'cu', b'zn', b'ga', b'ge', b'as', b'se',
       b'br', b'kr', b'rb', b'sr', b' y', b'zr', b'nb', b'mo', b'tc',
       b'ru', b'rh', b'pd', b'ag', b'cd', b'in', b'sn', b'sb', b'te',
       b' i', b'xe', b'cs', b'ba', b'la', b'ce', b'pr', b'nd', b'pm',
       b'sm', b'eu', b'gd', b'tb', b'dy', b'ho', b'er', b'tm', b'yb',
       b'lu', b'hf', b'ta', b' w', b're', b'os', b'ir', b'pt', b'au',
       b'hg', b'tl', b'pb', b'bi', b'po', b'at', b'rn', b'fr', b'ra',
       b'ac', b'th', b'pa', b' u', b'np', b'pu', b'am', b'cm', b'bk',
       b'cf', b'es', b'fm', b'md', b'no', b'lr', b'rf', b'db', b'sg',
       b'bh', b'hs', b'mt', b'ds', b'rg', b'cn', b'nh', b'fl', b'mc',
       b'lv', b'ts', b'og', b'ue'], dtype='|S2')

and I get the desired array. Only scalar character variables seem to be converted to arrays

I should add that this is an interface module that is linked to library with the actual code (so I can use all Fortran statements w/o interfering with f2py. But I think it is not relevant, and I assume a very easy-to-fix small bug. Hopefully.

In NumPy Version 1.23.5 this issue is not present.

Reproduce the code example:

(see above)

Error message:

N/A

Runtime information:

1.24.2
3.11.1 (main, Jan 21 2023, 21:33:07) [GCC 12.2.1 20221121 (Red Hat 12.2.1-4)]

[{'simd_extensions': {'baseline': ['SSE', 'SSE2', 'SSE3'],
'found': ['SSSE3',
'SSE41',
'POPCNT',
'SSE42',
'AVX',
'F16C',
'FMA3',
'AVX2',
'AVX512F',
'AVX512CD',
'AVX512_SKX'],
'not_found': ['AVX512_KNL',
'AVX512_KNM',
'AVX512_CLX',
'AVX512_CNL',
'AVX512_ICL']}},
{'architecture': 'SkylakeX',
'filepath': '/home/alex/Python_3.11.1/lib/python3.11/site-packages/numpy.libs/libopenblas64_p-r0-15028c96.3.21.so',
'internal_api': 'openblas',
'num_threads': 16,
'prefix': 'libopenblas',
'threading_layer': 'pthreads',
'user_api': 'blas',
'version': '0.3.21'},
{'architecture': 'SkylakeX',
'filepath': '/home/alex/Python_3.11.1/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scipy.libs/libopenblasp-r0-41284840.3.18.so',
'internal_api': 'openblas',
'num_threads': 16,
'prefix': 'libopenblas',
'threading_layer': 'pthreads',
'user_api': 'blas',
'version': '0.3.18'},
{'filepath': '/usr/lib64/libgomp.so.1.0.0',
'internal_api': 'openmp',
'num_threads': 16,
'prefix': 'libgomp',
'user_api': 'openmp',
'version': None},
{'architecture': 'SkylakeX',
'filepath': '/usr/lib64/libopenblaso-r0.3.21.so',
'internal_api': 'openblas',
'num_threads': 16,
'prefix': 'libopenblas',
'threading_layer': 'openmp',
'user_api': 'blas',
'version': '0.3.21'}]
None

Context for the issue:

The code expects a variable, and now returned are other parts of memory that could cause segmentation faults.
Also, the data type is not what is expected, so the python code breaks (in this case, it was used to concatenate a list of strings, but one was an array with arbitrary data from memory, and the GUI function that was passed to (to set as Window title) was not happy about some of the characters, such as \x00.

Could you please also point me where in f2py this issue may occur?

Initially I was happy when I read in the NumPy 1.24 release notes that there have been some improvements to handling of strings - to try them out - but now it seems the change also had some side effect and broke at least my string declarations.
:-(

PS - Is there a more detailed statement / example what has changes and is the new functionality of f2py for strings?