Converting Between ASCII and Binary Files

The utility program, acuFmtArray, can be used to convert binary files to ASCII or vice-versa.

For example,

acuFmtArray -crd Channel_acu.crd

can be used to convert the ASCII file, Channel_acu.crd, into binary format. During conversion, the following message will display in the terminal:

acuFmtArray: Coordinates:            Channel_acu.crd -> Channel_acu.crd.B

Once the file is converted to binary, it can no longer be edited by text editors. If you want to make changes to the file, it will need to be converted back to ASCII, then saved and again converted to binary. Note that AcuFmtArray infers the format of the file based on the extension. If a file name ends in .B, it is assumed to be binary. Otherwise, it is assumed to be ASCII.

The application automatically removes existing files after converting, unless the option “delete_files”=off is used.