General Input Features

The program supports the following features to enhance user-friendliness of input:

• Arithmetic expressions can be used (wherever numbers are required) involving the standard arithmetic
  operands in Fortran (+ - * / **), together with parentheses where necessary or convenient.
  Blanks are allowed in expressions and ignored, but they are interpreted as separators, i.e. as denoting the
  end of an expression, whenever the part before the blank can be evaluated as a correct expression.
  For instance '3*  4' will be interpreted as 12, but '3  *4' will be interpreted
  as 3, followed by a character *, followed in turn by the number 4.
  All numbers and results are interpreted and handled as being of type real, but whenever the result is a
  whole number (allowing for small round-off deviations), it will be recognized as possibly denoting an integer.
• (Single) quotes can be used to designate strings, i.e. (parts of) records which are not
  to be parsed for expressions, but which are to be taken as they are. The quotes themselves are ignored.
  Double quotes inside a string are understood to denote the single quote character (as part of the string).
• Empty records and starting blanks in records are allowed (and ignored),
  and can be used to enhance clarity and readability of the input file for human readers by structuring its layout.
• A double colon :: is interpeted as an end of line charachter,
  hence the double colon and anything after it is ignored