Can I use MIDAS format files between different platforms?
The MIDAS .bdf, .tbl and .fit formats use the local number representation of the machine on which it is installed in order to get optimal performance. There are several different standards used by vendors. The two general issues are byte order (i.e. big or little endian; Intel PC’s and DEC machines use little while most others use big endians) and number format for both interger and real numbers (e.g. ones or twos complement, IEEE or VAX; virtual all vendors use twos complement and IEEE by now). On UNIX systems, MIDAS format files are interchangeable between platforms using the same byte order (i.e. between PC/Linux, Ultrix and OSF/1 for little endian architectures, and SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX, Irix and AIX for big endian architectures) As an example, the reason for the problem using SPARC .bdf files on a PC Linux system is the byte-order which is opposite. Although we have never seen the problem, there could also be different alignment requirements for different system. For exactly this
