Developer Guide and Reference

ID 767251
Date 10/31/2024
Public
Document Table of Contents

OPEN: 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'.

Blank interpretation mode is an overridable setting. A BLANK= specifier in an I/O control list can change the blank interpretation mode for the statement containing that I/O control list. If the BN or BZ edit descriptors are specified for a formatted input statement, they supersede the interpretation of blanks set by a BLANK specifier in an OPEN statement or an I/O control list.

This specifier is not allowed on unformatted input or output.

See Also