reading data from txt file in fortran

Question

I am writing a FORTRAN program that reads data from a text file and writing it to the console. the data file looks something like this

1234567890123456 12345         


        

Answer 1

I used fixed format because the editing and inspecting of input files having fixed column structure is easier than that of zigzag data. My problem was how the Fortran run-time reader procedures interpret the presence and absence of decimal dots. I am not sure that my solution was the best but I read the data lines as character arrays, split them to fields having length 12 characters then I read the fields by read(*) statements.