Comments

Comments may be placed in the data file by prefixing the line with one of the standard comment characters. There are two comment characters allowed in the data file, specified by the parameters HARDCOMM and SOFTCOM for the command READF. These comment characters must occur in the first column of a line to be recognised as comment characters. The main purpose of comment characters is to document data files and to comment out unwanted lines of data. The existence of two comment characters provides the ability to selectively read data subsets from files. Blank lines are ignored in data files.

Although not recommended practice, the documentation of data files can be done without the use of comment characters: because PONGO will reject any line in which the required numerical column cannot be interpreted as a valid number, it does not matter whether a comment character is put at the start of the line or not.