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simon · Joined: 05 Jul 2006 Posts: 299

This simple program will not read the last character of the string.
The second output line generates a blank.

LitusSaxonicum · Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2009 11:44 am Post subject:

Simon, you are trying to read a single character with a * format, and that can't pick up the quote marks. Here's an effort to get them in place.

Eddie

simon · Joined: 05 Jul 2006 Posts: 299

Thanks for the reply Eddie. I get 'A ' as the second output so the Z is still missing. Perhaps I should give a little bit more background to indicate why this problem arises.

Let me change the program to the following:

JohnCampbell · Joined: 16 Feb 2006 Posts: 2615 Location: Sydney

I'd go back to (A) or not use read statements at all.

Alteranatively why not parse the line testing for "," and "=", keeping track of each couple and where the ,name and =value start.

LitusSaxonicum · Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2009 6:01 pm Post subject:

Simon,

I only did the first one, and without too much care!

Isn't this a good example of where one might consider using NAMELIST? I'm not a big fan of NAMELIST, but if your data is in the form you indicate, NAMELIST takes care of all the decyphering. Presumably each line has the same format because each line is generated by some other software.

If the data is generated by humans (and the keywords may be missing or mispelled) then you are in a whole different, and potentially more complex, ballgame.

NAMELIST is definitely a standard feature in later marks of Fortran, and is fully supported in FTN95.

Eddie

simon · Joined: 05 Jul 2006 Posts: 299

I found a simple solution to this problem: when reading the string, simply append a blank space to the end, as follows:

JohnCampbell · Joined: 16 Feb 2006 Posts: 2615 Location: Sydney

Simon,

If you want a simple solution, why use a read at all ?

Doesn't " c2 = c1(26:) " do the same thing ?

John

simon · Joined: 05 Jul 2006 Posts: 299

John,

Certainly, but only if one knew a priori that there were no trailing characters. The problem I originally raised only occurred because I was being too lazy to check whether I was at or near the end of the string. I could easily have included a LEN_TRIM somewhere, and checked how many characters were left, but that seemed a bit pedantic. Having the trailing blank seems to have solved all the problems in my specific context, for now. Eddie's suggestion about NAMELIST was a good one, and would work in over 90% of my cases, but there are occasional fields generated or modified by hand that I'm having to account for.

Simon

JohnCampbell · Joined: 16 Feb 2006 Posts: 2615 Location: Sydney

Simon,

I would expect that the problem relates to the interpretation of fmt=*
If you used fmt='(a)' the result may have been different.
I have written my free format interpreter without the use of formatted read. It is an easy solution.

The effective use of NAMELIST is something I have never managed to learn.

John