From help-octave-request at che dot utexas dot edu  Mon Jan 23 08:55:35 1995
Subject: Re: Raw file i/o 
From: John Eaton <jwe at che dot utexas dot edu>
To: przemek at rrdjazz dot nist dot gov (Przemek Klosowski)
cc: guido at aia dot RWTH-Aachen dot DE, help-octave@che.utexas.edu
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 95 08:54:52 CST

przemek at rrdjazz dot nist dot gov (Przemek Klosowski) wrote:

: There has been some discussion of binary data file formats in octave, with
: several people suggesting extensions to handle various binary data types.
: 
: I would suggest that instead of inventing yet another scheme for
: portable binaries, octave uses some standard method. I would recommend
: using the HDF library,

I agree that using something like this would be desirable.

But I think Octave needs the other features as well, to provide
compatibility with Matlab's binary I/O.  I believe that this is also
important, since people seem to want Octave to be compatible.

If there is a (mostly) standard library for binary data that is freely
available, I would like to use it.  I would even drop Octave's own
binary format in favor of the new method if it is easy to write a
conversion program (something that I expect should not be too hard).

In addition to HDF, I have heard about netCDF, which also looks like
it might be a reasonable alternative.

Can anyone comment on which data file formats (netCDF, HDF, or others)
are likely to be become standards? 

(Please e-mail me directly unless you really think it is something
that would be of interest to most people who read help-octave.)

Thanks,

jwe