Read_array Question



I have a file with data in array form, n rows and 4 columns, space 
separated.

The data is 
Qth 23 41 a+bx
Z9  3  7  41

or,
<name> number number <maxima expression>

In my test case, n < 20

I want to read this file into maxima.  I tried filling the array with 
nan to be able to later find the end of data, but, that failed.

rows:20; cols:4;
array(M,rows-1,cols-1);
fillarray(M,makelist(nan,i,rows*cols));
read_array("file name",M);

This worked without error.  The problem I have is the last token in the 
file is repeated to the end of the array.

The file had 4 rows of 4 items.  Read_array correctly placed the data 
in the first 4 rows of the array.  The last item of the file was used 
to fill the remaining 16 rows of the array.

Is there some simple way around this?

tomdean