Data of any of the floating-point types (Real, Double Precision, and Complex) may be transferred using any of the descriptors E, F, or G. For each complex number two descriptors must be provided, one for each component; these components may be separated, if required, by control descriptors. On output numbers are rounded to the specified number of digits. All floating-point data transfers are affected by the setting of the scale-factor; this is initially zero but can be altered by the P control descriptor, as explained in the section 10.9.
Output using Fw.d produces a fixed-point value in a field of w characters with exactly d digits after the decimal point. The decimal point is present even if w is zero, so that if a sign is produced there is only space for, at most, w-2 digits before the decimal point. If it is really important to suppress the decimal point in numbers with no fractional part one way is to use a format specification of the form (F15.0,TL1)... so that the next field starts one place to the left and over-writes the decimal point. Another way is to copy the number to an integer variable and write it with an I descriptor, but note the limited range of integers on most systems. F format is especially convenient in tabular layouts since the decimal points will line up in successive records, but it is not suitable for very large or small numbers.
Output with Ew.d produces a number in exponential or ``scientific" notation. The mantissa will be between 0.1 and 1 (if the scale-factor is zero). The form Ew.dEe specifies that there should be exactly e digits in the exponent. This form must be used if the exponent will have more than three digits (although this problem does not arise on machines on which the number range is too small). E format can be used to handle numbers of any magnitude. The disadvantage is that exceptionally large or small values do not stand out very well in the resulting columns of figures.
Gw.d is the general-purpose descriptor: if the value is greater than 0.1 but not too large to fit it the field it will be written using a fixed-point format with d digits in total and with 4 blanks at the end of the field; otherwise it is equivalent to Ew.d format. The form Gw.dEe allows you to specify the length of the exponent; if a fixed-point format is chosen there are e+2 blanks at the end.
The next example shows the different properties of these three formats on output:
X = 123.456789
Y = 0.09876543
WRITE(UNIT=*, FMT='(E12.5, F12.5, G12.5)') X,X,X, Y,Y,Y
produces two records (with 
representing the blank):
0.12346E+03 123.45679 123.46 0.98766E-01 0.09877 0.98766E-01On input all the E, F, and G descriptors have identical effects: if the input field contains an explicit decimal point it always takes precedence, otherwise the last d digits are taken as the decimal fraction. If an exponent is used it may be preceded by E or D (but the exponent letter is optional if the exponent is signed). If the input field provides more digits than the internal storage can utilise, the extra precision is ignored. It is usually best to use ( Fw.0) which will cope with all common floating-point or even integer forms.