Fortran 77: output floats with variable widths

Question

I need to output lots of (>20 million) float values to a text file from a Fortran 77 program. I'd like to keep the output file as small as possible. Therefore I would like to output the floats in a compact way, without resorting to binary.

I know the precision I need (usually two digits right of the decimal point), so in C I would use printf("%.2f %.2f", val1, val2); Is something like this possible in Fortran 77? All I found was that I have to set the field width explicitly (like in format (f8.2,x,f8.2)). This wastes lots of space, when I don't know the range of the output numbers beforehand.

If it is not possible in Fortran 77, do newer Fortran standards offer a way to do this?

Answer 1

The Fortran 2008 standard allows an edit descriptor such as f0.2 in response to which the output is the smallest possible field width which writes the whole part of the number followed by a decimal point and two fractional digits. I think that this has been part of the language standard since Fortran 90, possibly longer.

Answer 2

If you have a number, X, then INT(LOG10(X))+1 is the size of the integer part of your number (number of digits of the integer part). So, you just have to make some custom FORMAT labels for each of the values you want to print.

It is not very elegant, but I think it will help you achieve what you want.

Answer 3

I know this might come across as pedantic and unhelpful, but hear me out. It sounds like you are doing bad science. If your instrument is spitting out numbers from 1000.00 to 0.01, then your instrument is probably only accurate to one part in a hundred. So the number 9894.36 ought to be rounded to 9900 (no decimal point). All the other digits are not significant. Why is that relevant and helpful? Because you are wasting storage space if you are storing 9894.36. So, the answer is to use the g edit descriptor, which outputs in scientific notation. Then all of your numbers will take up the same space.