INPUT  {Variable | Quote}, ...

INPUT  File  <>  Variable, ...

INPUT  File( Numeric )  <>  [Variable, ...]

The Input command reads from a file or the Standard Input into a String or Byte variable. When no File handle is specified reads from Standard Input and can also issue prompts. Quoted arguments are written to Standard Output.

Input byte characters are not echoed unless echo is enabled by the platform for Standard Input. String arguments read through to the next End Of Line; which can be any one of:

CR/LF  LF   CR   LF/CR

Strings can also be read from a file in the same way. After reading a line of text you can check the status by calling the generic File..Status function in the Basis library. Input status codes are:

Eol    #A       The next line is blank.
Eof    #B       No more to read and the last line ended with an EOL.
Peof   #C       No more to read and the last line had no final EOL.
In     #D       The next line has some text.

You can also read binary integer and enumeration values from a file. Big or little byte ordering is specified on the Open command. Values read from the Standard Input are use big endian ordering.

Reading structures and real numeric types is not permitted and instead they must be marshalled. The Serialize.Primitive class in the Basis library is helpful for serializing and deserializing primitive types.

The File argument can be followed with a seek index provided it is opened for direct access. Before reading, the file is positioned to the index; which is a positive Cell. The zero-based position is indexed by bytes. When you only want to perform a seek operation you can omit the argument list after the diamond delimiter.