Just as the print * has an equivalent form in write(6,*) or write (unit=6,,fmt=*), the read * statement also has an equivalent statement.
read (unit=5,fmt=*) counttells the program to read count from (unit =5) the keyboard.
The read can also be used to read from a file. Consider:
open (unit =7, file="input.file",status="old")
! An input file is assigned to unit 7.
...
...
read (unit=7,fmt=*) alphad ! A variable is read from the input file.
...
close (unit=7)
This program reads a real number from the file input.file which
has been assigned to unit=7, and stores value in the variable
alphad.