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From: lee@eel.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re: unix file system
Message-ID: <1200003@eel.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Jul-85 22:32:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: eel.1200003
Posted: Mon Jul 29 22:32:00 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Aug-85 07:03:35 EDT
References: <3287@decwrl.UUCP>
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Nf-ID: #R:decwrl:-328700:eel:1200003:000:728
Nf-From: eel!lee    Jul 29 22:32:00 1985


Some folks have mentioned using the first words of the file to contain
a magic number and the record size for FORTRAN record-oriented files.
Before anyone goes off and reproduces the old ar and sccs mistakes,
the first few bytes should be used for an ASCII string identifying the
file as FORTRAN, giving the record size in an ASCII digit string, and
ending in a newline.  This makes straight printing, copying, and other
processing of the file much easier than if it has binary data in it.

E.g.
	<fortran!> 1722 `

in analogy with the portable ar(1) format.  The digit string could be
made fixed width in order to make it easy for FORTRAN to know how far
into the Unix file to lseek to find the first byte of the FORTRAN file.