Binary and Hexadecimal Numeric Formats

The binary and hexadecimal formats are primarily designed for compatibility with existing machine formats, not for human readability. All of them therefore have a F format as default output format. Some of these formats are only portable between machines with compatible byte ordering (endianness).

Binary formats use byte values that in text files are interpreted as special control functions, such as carriage return and line feed. Thus, data in binary formats should not be included in syntax files or read from data files with variable-length records, such as ordinary text files. They may be read from or written to data files with fixed-length records. See FILE HANDLE, for information on working with fixed-length records.

P and PK Formats

These are binary-coded decimal formats, in which every byte (except the last, in P format) represents two decimal digits. The most-significant 4 bits of the first byte is the most-significant decimal digit, the least-significant 4 bits of the first byte is the next decimal digit, and so on.

In P format, the most-significant 4 bits of the last byte are the least-significant decimal digit. The least-significant 4 bits represent the sign: decimal 15 indicates a negative value, decimal 13 indicates a positive value.

Numbers are rounded downward on output. The system-missing value and numbers outside representable range are output as zero.

The maximum field width is 16. Decimal places may range from 0 up to the number of decimal digits represented by the field.

The default output format is an F format with twice the input field width, plus one column for a decimal point (if decimal places were requested).

IB and PIB Formats

These are integer binary formats. IB reads and writes 2's complement binary integers, and PIB reads and writes unsigned binary integers. The byte ordering is by default the host machine's, but SET RIB may be used to select a specific byte ordering for reading and SET WIB, similarly, for writing.

The maximum field width is 8. Decimal places may range from 0 up to the number of decimal digits in the largest value representable in the field width.

The default output format is an F format whose width is the number of decimal digits in the largest value representable in the field width, plus 1 if the format has decimal places.

RB Format

This is a binary format for real numbers. It reads and writes the host machine's floating-point format. The byte ordering is by default the host machine's, but SET RIB may be used to select a specific byte ordering for reading and SET WIB, similarly, for writing.

The field width should be 4, for 32-bit floating-point numbers, or 8, for 64-bit floating-point numbers. Other field widths do not produce useful results. The maximum field width is 8. No decimal places may be specified.

The default output format is F8.2.

PIBHEX and RBHEX Formats

These are hexadecimal formats, for reading and writing binary formats where each byte has been recoded as a pair of hexadecimal digits.

A hexadecimal field consists solely of hexadecimal digits 0...9 and A...F. Uppercase and lowercase are accepted on input; output is in uppercase.

Other than the hexadecimal representation, these formats are equivalent to PIB and RB formats, respectively. However, bytes in PIBHEX format are always ordered with the most-significant byte first (big-endian order), regardless of the host machine's native byte order or PSPP settings.

Field widths must be even and between 2 and 16. RBHEX format allows no decimal places; PIBHEX allows as many decimal places as a PIB format with half the given width.