On 24 Feb 2006 at 16:21, Kevin Stanton wrote:

>Possibly two things:
>
>1) Aren't the field defs supposed to be defined as char(n)?

Actually, they aren't. Despite that all documentation imply that
external table is a text file, it is considered inside engine as a
binary one. So, if one knows internal representation of FB datatypes
and is able to fill the file according, the non-CHAR declarations are
ok.
I used binary external files successfully.

--
SY, Dimitry Sibiryakov.