FIX: Internal Read and MORE I/O List Items than in FORMAT

MS-DOS                                   | OS/2           | WINDOWS NT

The information in this article applies to:

• Microsoft FORTRAN for MS-DOS, versions 3.3, 4.0, 4.01, 4.1, 5.0, and 5.1
• Microsoft FORTRAN for OS/2, versions 4.1, 5.0, 5.1
• Microsoft FORTRAN PowerStation versions 1.0 and 1.0a
• Microsoft FORTRAN PowerStation 32 version 1.0

SYMPTOMS

In Microsoft FORTRAN versions 3.3, 4.0, 4.01, 4.1, 5.0, and 5.1, an internal file is not treated as a single record when a READ statement contains extra list items beyond the format specification's corresponding edit descriptors.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was corrected in FORTRAN PowerStation, version 4.0.

MORE INFORMATION

The ANSI 77 Standard states that when there are more input or output list items than the number of specified FORMAT statement edit descriptors:

   "...the file is positioned at the beginning of the next record and
   format control then reverts to the beginning of the format
   specification terminated by the last preceding right parenthesis."

   "...if an [internal] file is a character variable, character array
   element, or character substring, it consists of a single record."

However, Microsoft FORTRAN treats each character of a character variable as a single record, and will advance the file pointer to the next character in the variable instead of producing the F6501 end of file error message. The following code reproduces the problem:

       character*20 a
       a='123456789'
       read(a,'(f1.0,f2.0)')x1,x2,x3
       print*,x1,x2,x3
       end

   1.000000   23.000000   4.000000