Input/Output in statistical programming

Input/output/ (I/O) is analysed in terms of the transfer of items of various types having various internal and external representations between various internal and external positions. Ways of describing representation and position are discussed, for both character and binary data. Three basic properties of good I/O facilities for statistical computing are stated, and the facilities offered by four existing programming languages are matched against them. Finally extensions to Fortran are proposed that would provide the properties sought.