Hi Daniel,

Yup, its the one way to data tronsport between binary incompatible
platforms. transfering between the native binary data and human
readable binary symbols needs extra resources, duty, time, risk etc..
documentations are the insufficient copy of the reality. :)

Regards.

Ali

--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Daniel Rail <drail@n...>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> At May 26, 2004, 08:31, Ali Gökçen wrote:
>
> >> External tables are not binary files, but fixed length ASCII

files.

>
> > whats ASCII? 1 byte coded binary data, like EBCDIC.
> > char/integer/float.. is compiler directives to interpret bytes

for

> > machine cycles...
> > everythink is binary inside the computers. ;)
>
> Oh! I know that.:) I was referring to ASCII text format, where

numbers

> are represented as text in the file. It is recommended to read

them as

> character data and convert them, by using CAST. This comes from the
> IB6 beta Data Definition Guide, page 108.
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Daniel Rail
> Senior System Engineer
> ACCRA Group Inc. (www.accra.ca)
> ACCRA Med Software Inc. (www.filopto.com)