Re: reading Fortran unformatted files
- To: mathgroup@smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg11824] Re: reading Fortran unformatted files
- From: Paul Abbott <paul@physics.uwa.edu.au>
- Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 02:28:42 -0500
- Organization: University of Western Australia
- References: <6fi5jd$4pa@smc.vnet.net>
Paul Cally wrote: > I would like to be able to read (and possibly write) unformatted fortran > output files. The standard add-on package Utilities`BinaryFiles` is not > the answer, since fortran unformatted output records (at least on unix > machines) are padded at both ends with extra bytes. Most scientific > software systems, e.g., idl, have a simple switch in their open > statements to do this, but seemingly not Mathematica. Presumably, one > would also need to specify BigEndian or LittleEndian, depending on > which computer was being used. This is controlled by the ByteOrder->LeastSignificantByteFirst option. The format in which integers are read is controlled by the ByteOrder option. Integers can be treated as "least significant byte first" or "little-endian" (a format most often found on machines based on Intel processors, e.g., 386 and 486 MS-DOS, or on DEC VAX) instead of the default "most significant byte first" or "big-endian" (a format found on Motorola-based machines, e.g., Macintosh and many RISC-based machines such as SPARC). This option is also available when converting to binary form using ToBytes. > In principle, one could hack Utilities`BinaryFiles` to strip or append > the necessary bytes. However, this assumes a knowledge of what these > bytes actually are. Has anyone out there made such a hack, or some > other workaround? I had a look on deja news <http://www.dejanews.com/home_ps.shtml> for all postings on Utilities`BinaryFiles` to comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica but I could not see if your question had been answered. You might also want to look at "FastBinaryFiles: A MathLink Program for Fast Reading and Writing of Binary Files" on MathSource <http://www.mathsource.com> Cheers, Paul ____________________________________________________________________ Paul Abbott Phone: +61-8-9380-2734 Department of Physics Fax: +61-8-9380-1014 The University of Western Australia Nedlands WA 6907 mailto:paul@physics.uwa.edu.au AUSTRALIA http://www.pd.uwa.edu.au/~paul God IS a weakly left-handed dice player ____________________________________________________________________