Portability across architectures..

[David Collier-Brown]

In article <103 at simsdevl.UUCP> dandc at simsdevl.UUCP (Dan DeClerck) writes:
| I've run across a need to have data files in various forms of UN*X
| be portable to each other.
| I could write data out to files in ASCII, but this is cumbersome,
| slow and may hamper the products' marketability.
 
>From article <7038 at bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>, by scs at athena.mit.edu (Steve Summit):
| Please strongly consider using ASCII after all.  The advantages
| are many; the disadvantages are comparatively minor.

  In fact, you can get better efficency in many cases by writing in
ascii: zeros and blanks are represented by single characters instead
of whole records...
  Once upon a time, I used to beam with pleasure when watching a
spreadsheet stored in ascii load faster than the same thing written
in binary by a compeditor's product.  It didn't happen all the time,
but it wasn't all that rare (many spreadsheets in those days were
sparse arrays, written to disk in an inefficent manner).

--dave
-- 
 David Collier-Brown.  | yunexus!lethe!dave
 78 Hillcrest Ave,.    | He's so smart he's dumb.
 Willowdale, Ontario.  |        --Joyce C-B