What does “real*8” mean?

Question

The manual of a program written in Fortran 90 says, \"All real variables and parameters are specified in 64-bit precision (i.e. real*8).\"

According to

Answer 1

The star notation (as TYPE*n is called) is a non-standard Fortran construct if used with TYPE other than CHARACTER.

If applied to character type, it creates an array of n characters (or a string of n characters).

If applied to another type, it specifies the storage size in bytes. This should be avoided at any cost in Fortran 90+, where the concept of type KIND is introduced. Specifying storage size creates non-portable applications.