NAME

arc - interconvert archive files between internal (binary) and external (text) formats

SYNOPSIS

arc [ direction ] -i inputfile -o outputfile

arc -example

arc -egn

DESCRIPTION

The archive file inputfile is read, converted and written to outputfile. The conversion depends on the format of inputfile. If it is in binary format then the conversion is to text format and vice versa. The format of the input file can be determined if it is a legitimate archive file. The binary format file is used internally for the yammp programs while the text format file can be viewed, modified and translated to other coordinate file formats.

There are three versions of the archive file format but the latest version should always be used. If the input file is an older version the conversion will still be to an output file of the latest version. An explicit direction of conversion can be specified. This is a string like -bitj or -tibj where i and j are the numbers 1, 2 or 3 corresponding to the three versions of the archive format, b and t indicate binary and text respectively and the first letter-digit pair indicates the implied format of the input file and the second pair that of the output file. If the conversion direction is specified the input file format must correspond to that implied by the direction string.

An archive file may contain one or more sets of coordinates and velocities. A template for this file in text format can be obtained on the standard output with the -example option.

A template for any version can be obtained with the -egn option where n is 1, 2 or 3. The templates can be redirected to files to be used as starting points for new archives although this is a tedious way of constructing archives.

EXAMPLES

arc -o rna.ar -i rna.ax

Convert the input archive file rna.ax to the other format and write to rna.ar. The conversion direction depends on the input format, if binary the output would be in text format and vice versa. An infomal convention is to use the .ax file name extension for text format archives and .ar for binary archives. Note that the -i and -o options can be specified in any order

arc -b3b2 -i dna3.ar -o dna2.ar

Convert the version 3 binary archive file dna3.ar to a version 2 binary archive dna2.ar. This is useful for use with arcmp which is an old utility which has not been updated to use the latest version of the archive file. Note that this is a binary to binary conversion although from one version to another.

FILES

SEE ALSO

The archive file format.

DIAGNOSTICS

BUGS

NOTES