Reading comment lines correctly in an input file using Fortran 90

Fortran doesn't automatically skip comments lines in input files. You can do this easily enough by first reading the line into a string, checking the first character for your comment symbol or search the string for that symbol, then if the line is not a comment, doing an "internal read" of the string to obtain the numeric value.

Something like:

use, intrinsic :: iso_fortran_env

character (len=200) :: line
integer :: dat1, RetCode

read_loop: do
   read (1, '(A)', isostat=RetCode)  line
    if ( RetCode == iostat_end)  exit ReadLoop
    if ( RetCode /= 0 ) then
      ... read error
      exit read_loop
    end if
    if ( index (line, "*") /= 0 )  cycle read_loop
    read (line, *) dat1
end do read_loop