st: problem in reading a fixed format data

["Jiang, Tao" <TJiang@air.org>]

Hi,

I have a data set (say, foo.txt) in fixed format, several observations as:

-10369-13830
 -1766   944
  7732  6551
  6941  3474
  1164 -3143
  -272  6880

I wrote a dictionary file as:
infile dictionary using foo.txt  {  
  _column(1) v1 %6.4f                                             
  _column(7) v2 %6.4f
}

when I use infile to input the data via the dictionary file, there is one
error as: '.-272' cannot be read as a number for v1[6].

In SAS, I can read into the data without problem, where -272 is translated
as -.0272.  

Is there any way in stata to do the same?

Thanks!
                                          
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