In this lesson, you'll be working with column input, the most common input style. Column input specifies actual column locations for values. However, column input is appropriate only in certain situations. When you use column input, your data must be

• standard character or numeric values
  
• in fixed fields.

Standard numeric data values can only contain

• numbers
• decimal points
• numbers in scientific, or E, notation (23E4)
• minus signs.

Nonstandard numeric data include

• values that contain special characters, such as percent signs (%), dollar signs ($), and commas (,)
• date and time values
• data in fraction, integer binary and real binary, and hexadecimal forms.

The external file referenced by the fileref Staff contains the personnel information for a technical writing department of a small computer manufacturer. The fields contain values for each employee's last name, first name, job title, and annual salary.