Ron Ford wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:52:52 -0700 (PDT), e p chandler posted:
>
>> Paul van Delst wrote:
>>>> On Aug 29, 4:28 pm, fm2766 wrote:
>>>>> Hello, I have to convert integers in characters; for example: from
>>>>> number i=123456 to string c="123456".
>>>>> I could write in a file the variable "i", and later read it as a
>>>>> variable "c", but this method seems to me very inefficient.
>>>>> Some suggestions?
>>>>
>>>> Well, that's almost what you do, however, not to an external file but
>>>> to an 'internal' one as defined by your c, as in:
>>>>
>>>> write(c, '(i6)') i
>>>
>>> Maybe some thought should be given to giving this process an additional, more intuitive,
>>> name. It's such a common question and "Internal file writing and reading" sure isn't the
>>> first thing a newcomer thinks of when they want to convert int->character or vice versa.
>>
>> Oh no. Let the C programmers learn some Fortran instead of whining
>> about it. Learning a foreign language involves learning its idioms. To
>> a FORTRAN programmer, the concept of "internal file" makes sense.
>
> Gosh, elliot, I know that internal writes have been the answer for a lot of
> questions I've had since I renewed my commitment to fortran as a syntax.
> It's пїЅ9.6 in MR&C.
>
> What I don't see is a file. By "file," do people mean "whatever internal
> variables you used to read the data?"
Yes. I think of those variables as file buffers.
Also using internal files opens up the opportunity to have dynamic
format expressions. Since a format may be contained in a character
variable, it is possible to write to that character variable in a
creative way!
- e
[Aside] Back in ye olden days of interpreted Microsoft Basic, that
language (v4 and v5) had "PRINT USING" for formatted file output. But
it was not ordinarily possible to direct the output to a string, as is
done with sprintf in C. IIRC there was some way to get Basic to open a
file so that no external I/O actually took place. Instead it was
possible to access memory where the file contents would be placed. [/
Aside]
