readfileBy storing data files in binary, you save disk space and make access by applications more efficient. An ASCII data file can take two to five times the disk space of a comparable binary data file. Not only is there less information in each byte, but extra bytes are needed for decimal points, delimiters, and end-of-line markers.
It is very easy to create a binary archive using newform as the
following examples show. The input data for these examples are in the
ASCII file latlon.dat (shown below). They consist of 20 random
latitude and longitude values. The size of the file on a Unix system
is 460 bytes.
Here is the latlon.dat file:
-47.303545 -176.161101 -0.928001 0.777265 -28.286662 35.591879 12.588231 149.408117 -83.223548 55.319598 54.118314 -136.940570 38.818812 91.411330 -34.577065 30.172129 27.331551 -155.233735 11.624981 -113.660611 77.652742 -79.177679 77.883119 -77.505502 -65.864879 -55.441896 -63.211962 134.124014 35.130219 -153.543091 29.918847 144.804390 -69.273601 38.875778 -63.002874 36.356024 35.086084 -21.643402 -12.966961 62.152266