The BLANK specifier indicates how blanks are interpreted in a file. It takes the following form:
BLANK = blnk
blnk
Is a scalar default character expression that evaluates to one of the following values:
| 'NULL' | Indicates all blanks are ignored, except for an all-blank field (which has a value of zero). |
| 'ZERO' | Indicates all blanks (other than leading blanks) are treated as zeros. |
The default is 'NULL' (for explicitly OPENed files, preconnected files, and internal files). If you specify compiler option f66 (or OPTIONS/NOF77), the default is 'ZERO'.
If the BN or BZ edit descriptors are specified for a formatted input statement, they supersede the default interpretation of blanks.
See Also