Gérald, that is strange. For me, adding the EXTERNAL ARRAY statement has always done its magic. And I know how frustrating it can be to figure out ways to make spurious 'error' messages go away so that real errors get noticed right away if they pop up ...

Btw, could you rig up some compilable repro code that fails despite EXTE ARRA after LOCAL? I just did a quick test with the code you posted and EXTE ARRA worked like a charm.