In the preceding examples, the read/write type (input or output) was
not included in the format descriptors (ASCII_data and
binary_data). FreeForm ND naming conventions were used, so
newform can determine from the context which format should be
used for input and which for output. Consider the command:
newform latlon.dat -o latlon.bin
The input file extension is .dat and the output file extension
is .bin. These extensions provide context indicating that ASCII
should be used as the input format and binary should be used as the
output format. The format description file that newform will
look for is the file with the same name as the input file and the
extension .fmt, i.e., latlon.fmt.
If you use the following command:
newform latlon.bin
to translate the binary archive latlon.bin back to ASCII,
newform identifies the input format as binary and uses the ASCII
format for output. The ASCII data is written to the screen because an
output file was not specified.
For information about FreeForm ND file name conventions, see Chapter 8.