signed zeros

[Jack Howarth]

   Why does gfortran output...

 ------ stepsize=   -0.0000

for the code...

      STEPCH=-0.2511847893E-05
      WRITE(6,'(A,F10.4)') ' ------ stepsize=',STEPCH
      END

whereas other fortran compilers like ifort 11.0 outputs...

 ------ stepsize=    0.0000

I see the same unsigned output from SGI's old fort77.
Why was it decided to have gfortran emit the sign for
this case? Shouldn't gfortran's i/o check to see if
only zeros are to be printed and remove the sign in
that case?
           Jack
ps I bring this issue up since it does cause noise
on some testsuites like cns-solve due to the additional
negative sizes.