Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!caesar.cs.montana.edu!ogicse!blake!djo7613
From: djo7613@blake.acs.washington.edu (Dick O'Connor)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Variable repetition count in FORMAT
Keywords: FORMAT, repetition count
Message-ID: <5435@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 24 Jan 90 15:52:44 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Univ of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 30


Somewhere in my youth (or childhood!) I recall working on a (CDC?)
FORTRAN compiler that allowed you to pass an integer variable in a
READ or WRITE statement to the FORMAT statement to enable a variable
number of repetitions of a particular descriptor.  I think the equals
sign was used on the FORMAT end, so that
      ICOUNT=4
      WRITE (41,900) ICOUNT, (IARRAY(I),I=1,ICOUNT)
900   FORMAT (=(I5))

would act as if the FORMAT statement read
900   FORMAT (4(I5))

Now in this case, it's trivial, because FORMAT will do what you want
anyway, without any special repetition count.  In The Real World, I have
a case where the FORMAT statement is complicated, writes different
alpha descriptions on each line, followed by the rep count and ICOUNT
many real numbers, where ICOUNT is actually an array of integer variables,
not all the same.  That equals sign (if I recall the character used 
correctly) would come in handy, but my current environment doesn't
support it.

I can clever my way around the problem with a bit more code, but it got
me wondering...is this construct I recall a legal bit of FORTRAN in any
current implementations?  Is this all just a bad dream?  :)

"Moby" Dick O'Connor                            ** DISCLAIMER: It would
Washington Department of Fisheries              ** surprise me if the
Olympia, Washington  98504                      ** rest of the Department
Internet Mail: djo7613@blake.u.washington.edu   ** agreed with any of this!