Editing Guide to madagascar programs (section)

==sfdd==
{| class="wikitable" align="center" cellspacing="0" border="1"
! colspan="4" style="background:#ffdead;" | Convert between different formats. 
|-
! colspan="4" | sfdd < in.rsf > out.rsf trunc=n line=8 ibm=n form= type= format=
|-
| ''string '' || '''form=''' ||   || 	ascii, native, xdr
|-
| ''string '' || '''format=''' ||   || 	Element format (for conversion to ASCII)
|-
| ''bool   '' || '''ibm=n''' ||  [y/n] || 	Special case - assume integers actually represent IBM floats
|-
| ''int    '' || '''line=8''' ||   || 	Number of numbers per line (for conversion to ASCII)
|-
| ''bool   '' || '''trunc=n''' ||  [y/n] || 	Truncate or round to nearest when converting from float to int/short
|-
| ''string '' || '''type=''' ||   || 	int, float, complex, short, long
|}


The <tt>sfdd</tt> program is used to change either the form (<tt>ascii</tt>,
<tt>xdr</tt>, <tt>native</tt>) or the type (<tt>complex</tt>, <tt>float</tt>,
<tt>int</tt>, <tt>char</tt>) of the input dataset. 
In the example below, we create a plain text (ASCII) file with numbers and
then use <tt>sfdd</tt> to generate an RSF file in <tt>xdr</tt> form with
<tt>complex</tt> numbers. 
<pre>
bash$ cat test.txt
1 2 3 4 5 6
bash$ echo n1=6 data_format=ascii_int in=test.txt > test.rsf
bash$ sfin test.rsf
test.rsf:
    in="test.txt"
    esize=0 type=int form=ascii
    n1=6           d1=?           o1=?
        6 elements
bash$ sfdd < test.rsf form=xdr type=complex > test2.rsf
bash$ sfin test2.rsf
test2.rsf:
    in="/tmp/test2.rsf@"
    esize=8 type=complex form=xdr
    n1=3           d1=?           o1=?
        3 elements 24 bytes
bash$ sfdisfil < test2.rsf
   0:          1,         2i         3,         4i         5,         6i
</pre>
To learn more about the RSF data format, consult the [[Guide to RSF file format| guide to RSF format]].