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3.4.1 Format Type and Title
A line specifying the format type and title begins a format
description. A format descriptor, for example, binary_data, is
used to indicate format type to FreeForm ND. The format title, for
example, "Default binary format", briefly describes the format. It
must be surrounded by quotes and follow the format descriptor on the
same line. The maximum number of characters for the format title is 80
including the quotes.
Format descriptors indicate (in the order given) file type, read/write
type, and file section. Possible values for each descriptor component
are shown in the following table.
Format Descriptor Components
|
File Type | Read/Write Type
(optional) | File Section |
|
|
|
data |
file_header |
record_header |
file_header_separate* |
record_header_separate* |
|
|
|
* The qualifier separate indicates
there is a header file separate from the data file.
|
The components of a format descriptor are separated by underscores
(_). For example, ASCII_output_data indicates that the format
description is for ASCII data in an output file. The order of
descriptors in a format description should reflect the order of format
types in the file. For instance, the descriptor
ASCII_file_header would be listed in the format description
file before ASCII_data. The format descriptors you can use in
FreeForm ND are listed in the next table, where XXX stands for
ASCII, binary, or dBASE. (Example: XXX_data
= ASCII_data, binary_data, or dBASE_data.)
Format Descriptors
|
Data | Header | Special |
XXX_data |
XXX_input_data |
XXX_output_data |
|
|
|
XXX_file_header |
XXX_file_header_separate |
XXX_record_header |
XXX_record_header_separate |
XXX_input_file_header |
XXX_input_file_header_separate |
XXX_input_record_header |
XXX_input_record_header_separate |
XXX_output_file_header |
XXX_output_file_header_separate |
XXX_output_record_header |
XXX_output_record_header_separate |
|
|
|
|
|
* The RETURN descriptor lets FreeForm ND skip
over end-of-line characters in the data. |
|
** The EOL descriptor is a constant
indicating an end-of-line character should be inserted in a
multi-line record. |
|
|
For more information about header formats, see Chapter 5
on page 89.
Tom Sgouros and James Gallagher, 2006-02-12