HP Fortran Programmer's Reference (September 2007)

HP Fortran statements
FORMAT
Chapter 10 361
FORMAT
Describes how I/O data is to be formatted.
Syntax
label FORMAT ( format-list )
label is a statement label.
format-list is a comma-separated list of format items, where each item in the list can be
either one of the edit descriptors described in Table 9-1 or ( format-list ). If
format-list is a list item, it may be optionally preceded by a repeat
specification—a positive integer that specifies how may times format-list
is to be repeated.
Description
The FORMAT statement holds the format specification that indicates how data in formatted I/O
is to be translated between internal (binary) representation and formatted (ASCII)
representation. The translation makes it possible to represent data in a humanly readable
format.
Although a format specification can be embedded within a data transfer statement, the point
to using a FORMAT statement is to make it available to any number of data transfer
statements. Several data transfer statements can use the same format specification contained
in a FORMAT statement by referencing label .
Another advantage of the FORMAT statement over the use of embedded format specifications is
that it is ”pre-compiled”, reducing the runtime overhead of processing the format specification
and providing compile-time error checking of the FMT= specifier.
Examples
PROGRAM format_example
WRITE (15,FMT=20) 1234, 45, -12
20 FORMAT (I6, 2I4)
END PROGRAM format_example
When compiled and executed, this program outputs the following (where b represents the
blank character):
bb 1234 bb 45 b -12