13.6.4 BLANK Specifier

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'. For the correct form of this option, see your user manual or programmer's guide.

If the BN or BZ edit descriptors are specified for a formatted input statement, they supersede the default interpretation of blanks.

For More Information:

For details on the BN and BZ edit descriptors, see Section 11.3.4.