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5 Command file: Reading the data 61Qualifiers relating to data input and outputqualifieractionOther legal components of a format statement are• the , character; required to separate fields - blanks arenot permitted in the format.• the / character; indicates the next field is to be read fromthe next line. However a / on the end of a format to skipa line is not honoured.• BZ; the default action is to read blank fields as missingvalues. * and NA are also honoured as missing values. Ifyou wish to read blank fields as zeros, include the stringBZ.• the string BM; switches back to ’blank missing’ mode.• the string Tc; moves the ’last character read’ pointer to lineposition c so that the next field starts at position c + 1.For example T0 goes back to the beginning of the line.• the string D; invokes debug mode.A format showing these components is!FORMAT(D,3I4,8X,A6,3(2x,F5.2)/4x,BZ,20I1) and issuitable for reading 27 fields from 2 data records such as111122223333xxxxxxxxALPHAFxx 4.12xx 5.32xx 6.32xxxx123 567 901 345 7890New!MERGE c f [ !SKIP n ][ !MATCH a b ] may be specified on a line following the datafile line.The purpose is to combine data fields from the (primary) datafile with data fields from a secondary file (f). The effect is toopen the named file (skip n lines) and then insert the columnsfrom the new file into field positions starting at position c.If !MATCH a b is specified, ASReml checks that the field a(0 < a < c) has the same value as field b. If not, it is assumedthat the merged file has some missing records and missingvalues are inserted into the data record and the line from theMERGE file is kept for comparison with the next record. Atthis stage it is expected that the lines in the MERGE fileare in the same order as the corresponding lines occur in theprimary data file, and that there are no extraneous lines inthe MERGE file. (It is proposed to extend this so the ordersdo not need to agree and that multiple lines in the primaryfile could be merged with the same line of the MERGE file.)