Editing Guide to RSF file format (section)

===Form===
The data stored with RSF can also be in different forms: ASCII, native
binary, and XDR binary. Native binary is often used by default. It is the
binary format employed by the machine running the application. On
Linux-running PC, the native binary format will typically correspond to the
so-called little-endian byte ordering. On some other platforms, it might be
big-endian ordering. XDR is a binary format designed by Sun for exchanging
files over the network. It typically corresponds to big-endian byte ordering. It
is more efficient to process RSF files in the native binary format, but storing the corresponding file in an XDR format might be a good idea if you intend to access data from different platforms. RSF also allows for an ASCII
(plain text) form of data files. 
Conversion between different types and forms is accomplished with
<tt>sfdd</tt> program. Here are some examples. First, let us create synthetic data.
<pre>
bash$ sfmath n1=10 output='10*sin(0.5*x1)' > sin.rsf
bash$ sfin sin.rsf
sin.rsf:
    in="/tmp/sin.rsf@"
    esize=4 type=float form=native
    n1=10          d1=1           o1=0
        10 elements 40 bytes
bash$ < sin.rsf sfdisfil
   0:             0        4.794        8.415        9.975        9.093
   5:         5.985        1.411       -3.508       -7.568       -9.775
</pre>
Converting the data to the integer type:
<pre>
bash$ < sin.rsf sfdd type=int > isin.rsf
bash$ sfin isin.rsf
isin.rsf:
    in="/tmp/isin.rsf@"
    esize=4 type=int form=native
    n1=10          d1=1           o1=0
        10 elements 40 bytes
bash$ < isin.rsf sfdisfil
   0:    0    4    8    9    9    5    1   -3   -7   -9
</pre>
Converting the data to the ASCII form:
<pre>
bash$ < sin.rsf sfdd form=ascii > asin.rsf
bash$ < asin.rsf sfdisfil
   0:             0        4.794        8.415        9.975        9.093
   5:         5.985        1.411       -3.508       -7.568       -9.775
bash$ sfin asin.rsf
asin.rsf:
    in="/tmp/asin.rsf@"
    esize=0 type=float form=ascii
    n1=10          d1=1           o1=0
        10 elements
bash$ cat /tmp/asin.rsf@
0 4.79426 8.41471 9.97495 9.09297 5.98472 1.4112 -3.50783
-7.56803 -9.7753
</pre>