Suppose that you wanted to be able to read date from the keyboard, written in the form
12.02.92
where a two-digit month code is followed by a period, a two-digit day, another period, and a two-digit year code. Why would this be impossible to do without formatted input?
Look at ``date1.f'' (or view it directly) for an example of a program that reads dates in that format and then prints back the different parts.
This program illustrates two useful features of FORMAT statements.
First, notice the use of ``TR1'' in the first FORMAT statement. What does this do?
Second, look at the final three FORMAT statements to see how character strings can be incorporated into FORMAT statements.
Try rerunning ``date1.f'', but deliberately enter the date in the wrong format. (Enter 2.3.4, for example.) What happens?
Hamlet Project