I have the following data format:

 Date:       1997  2 21.0   dE/E:  1.34138E-07   dL/L:  2.61358E-15
 Date:       1998  7  6.0   dE/E:  8.72011E-08   dL/L:  5.22716E-15
 Date:       1999 11 18.0   dE/E:  1.25871E-07   dL/L:  3.92037E-15
 Date:       2001  4  1.0   dE/E:  2.85034E-08   dL/L:  4.29374E-15
 Date:       2002  8 14.0   dE/E:  1.42615E-07   dL/L:  1.86684E-15

When I try to read this data using the following 'read' statement, it
is not reading beyond 'dE'. It does not print anything beyond the 'dE'
in the above file (i.e, starting from '/')....My 'read' statement and
output is below:

 read(10,*)test1,test2,test3,test4,test5,test6
 print *,test1,test2,test3,test4,test5,test6

output:
Date: 1997  2 21.0 dE
Date: 1998  7  6.0  dE
Date: 1999 11 18.0 dE
Date: 2001  4  1.0  dE
Date: 2002  8 14.0 dE

...

"If a slash ( / ) is encountered during execution, the READ statement is
terminated, and any remaining input list items are unchanged."

You need an explicit FORMAT statement.

My recommended approach for data like this (assuming that doing
something like changing the input data format isn't an option - quotes
would solve it easily for example) is:

1. Read the whole line into a character string using "A" format.

2. Separate the fields by searching for the blank delimitters. Make use
of the INDEX, SCAN, and/or VERIFY intrinsics to do so. I've got my own
subroutine that I use for such things, but it in turn uses other of my
utility procedures. Probably about as easy to roll your own; it isn't
very hard. Most people that do a lot of Fortran input parsing probably
have one in their toolbox of handy routines.

3. Use an internal list-directed read to decode the data from each field
(except for the character fields, which don't need any further
decoding).

--
J. Giles

"I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software
design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously
no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated
that there are no obvious deficiencies."   --  C. A. R. Hoare

That's exactly what I did. I read the whole thing into a character
string and converted the required numbers into floats:

character(len=67)::test1
real *8 frac

read(10,100)test1
read(test1(36:46),fmt='(f11.9)')frac

100 format(a67)

read(10,'(A)') test1
read(test1(36:46),*) frac

a)  The simple "A" format will read the length of the variable w/o a
precise count, and
b( The substring selection eliminates the "/" problem character so you
can use list-directed formatting again.

Or, since it was a fixed-column file, you could simply skip the required
number of columns something like

read(10,'(35X,E11.5)') frac

Or, as Richard and James pointed out, a little alternative work in one
of a couple of ways could leave you w/ being able to use the
list-directed i/o, too.

In that particular situation, I would personally not try to
find a suitable fortran format to read the data.
That way of doing imply that each file requires its own parser,
which is at the exact opposite of current software practices.
Instead, I would turn the file into a standard data format,
and directly use a component to read that format.
For example, it would be easy to transform the previous data into
a csv data file and use a csv fortran component, isn'it ?

Regards,